Time-Honored Traditions

When I go to Ponderosa, no matter how little room I have left in my stomach, I always make an obligatory stop at the sundae bar. The custard dispensers, the tub of fluffy whipped cream, the chocolate and rainbow sprinkles, the ladle that you can use to drizzle chocolate syrup over all of it. . . a trip to Ponderosa would not be complete without that.

I noticed lately, though, that I wasn't getting as much enjoyment out of my sundae as I'd anticipated. Nor was it just because of the absence of sticky caramel sauce (which, alas, this Ponderosa did not have). The ice cream just didn't taste as good as I love to remember. I wonder if anything ever tastes as good as it did when you were a kid. I don't know if it's possible.

When I was small, my grandparents would take me and my sister to the Ponderosa near their house for dinner. It felt like such a big deal -- the kind of occasion I'd look forward to all day. After all, for kids, it just doesn't take all that much. Everything seems new and fresh and magical when you're that age. I liked the paintings on the walls. I liked the little corridor that led down to the restrooms. I liked the exhilaration of standing in line at the counter and gazing up at the vivid, colorful pictures on the posted menu. I loved the plump, buttery rolls at the buffet and -- of course -- the sundae bar to cap it all off. It just seemed to me like a perfect experience.

Most of the time, I don't look at the world that way anymore. There comes a day, you don't really know when it happens, but you stop looking at the pictures on the menu and start eyeing the prices instead. You pick up one of the juicy rolls and mentally calculate how many minutes of jogging it might take to burn this baby off. Maybe you even grumble about the crowdedness, the service, the wait, the fact that the table is way too close to the swinging kitchen door.

It's not a totally hopeless situation, though, this whole "getting-older" business. I like to tell myself that, anyway, because when I go to Ponderosa and glance around, I get short-lived, glimmering flashbacks of the person I once was.

Maybe that's why I still insist on making the sundae bar a part of my rare Ponderosa visits. It means something to me today because I loved it all those years ago. It represents something I'm not ready to give up just yet. I suspect I'm eating a sundae more for the memories than for how it actually tastes. And maybe, just maybe, on those days when everything else seems routine and rushed and easily taken for granted, there's nothing necessarily wrong with that.

Loss of Tolerance

I gave up Diet Coke a few weeks back. Grabbed a glass of it yesterday, just out of desperation, just because it was convenient and I was thirsty. Well, boy, did I ever regret it. Within minutes, I felt as if I'd ingested poison. I think there's a point to this story, but I'm too tired to tell you what it is.

15 Dollars Exquisitely Spent

I think I have a weird notion of just what an adventure is. For some people, it might be skydiving, skirt-chasing downtown, or traveling all around the globe. For a rigid, routine-oriented person such as myself, an adventure is any slight deviation from what I typically see, do, or say.

An adventure, for me, is taking a shortcut that shaves a mile off my commute home. It's clenching my teeth and NOT compulsively leaning over to pick up the purse that just fell off the passenger seat of my car. It's having a conversation with an important person and slyly injecting a word whose pronunciation I've not yet mastered. It just doesn't take all that much.

I'm feeling refreshed and pleased to announce that I had an adventure today. Maybe not the kind I'd originally planned. . . but, then, aren't those the best ones?

I was supposed to meet up with some people at a campsite by a specific time. Lo and behold, I drove for two hours and couldn't find the place to save my life. My map from the Internet was totally different from what I actually encountered. I lacked the initiative to stop someplace and ask for directions. Instead, I kept turning my car around, searching, searching, and searching some more, but invariably hitting dead ends all over the place.

Eventually, that "specific time" for meeting up was merely 10 minutes away. I looked at the clock and sighed. They'd be leaving their tent and going boating or swimming at 1:30. My persistent calls to their cell phone went unanswered. If I ever made it there, I'd still never find them in the maze. Since I was tired and had a headache, anyway, I figured I should do an about-face and just go home.

Then, I realized that an attitude adjustment was in order, because this attempt might not have gone to waste, after all.

I stopped, slowed down, "opened my eyes," and really observed my surroundings. Here was a chance to view a part of the state I'd never seen before. At the charming, old-fashioned ice cream shop where I stopped for a snack, the service was friendly and languid. The mountains around me were awash in majestic beauty. I was getting a healthy dose of fresh air, sunshine, and time to myself. Heedless of the destination, this was an opportunity to escape from the mundane and clear my head of any stressful thoughts whatsoever.

I've said before that tea tastes a million times better when I drink it from the antique family teacups. . . the kind that my mom brings out only for Thanksgiving or Christmas or huge birthday celebrations. Well, in a similar sense, my good old CDs sounded spectacularly fresh when I played them amidst this scenery. For once, they weren't the backdrop for mindless errands in busy neighborhoods. Today, I could give the melodies a focus and an appreciation that they'd possibly never received.

Deep down, I craved that. Wasn't it something I always wanted, anyway? To pack up my car, be alone with my observations, and just drive. . . drive somewhere with no goal in mind. . . drive away from the everyday, and fast? Again, it may not have matched up precisely with the intent, but I was still living some sort of dream on a small scale. Might as well recognize the value in that.

While this cost me half a tank of gasoline (hence, the 15-dollar reference in the title), that didn't faze me. I suspect that the insights and the level of fulfillment I reached were worth every penny. At this point, I may have gotten something I needed above almost anything in the world.

(I'd ordinarily regret the inclusion of "almost" in that sentence, but there are some days, such as today, when "above almost anything" is truly good enough.)

On Names You Never Can Give To Your Children

You know how it feels when you associate a name with some painful memory. . . maybe some person whom you didn't particularly like, or who unintentionally reminded you of something you couldn't stand, maybe even something in yourself?

Well, this doesn't happen to me too often, but a certain female name does carry unpleasant baggage and make me flinch when I hear it. Fortunately, I almost never do, because it's not a common name by any means. I've stumbled upon it only three times in all my life, and all three times have, for vastly different reasons, signified something deeply negative. Stranger still, while the first cringe-inducing encounter was a decade ago (and was enough of a deterrent in itself), the other two occurred lately and within a couple of months of each other.

Now, that was the proverbial icing on the cake. Those were the two incidents that really drove me over the edge and made me say, "That's it. I never liked that name in the first place, but now, I absolutely hate it. I never want to come into contact with it again. I'd cross it out in baby name books, but that would be somehow acknowledging its existence, and I can't give it the luxury even of that."

Is this all a big coincidence? Or is it just destined to be an unspeakably toxic name to me in general? I'm leaning towards the latter. I suspect things could work in the other direction, as well. In past years, I've liked three guys who had the same first name and very similar personalities, almost precisely the same qualities that appealed to me, all across the board.

Feel free to laugh, but honestly. . . even while I don't pretend to understand the intricacies, I'm thinking there could be some kind of psychology to it.

(P.S. I can't believe I almost forgot my shockingly consistent experience of envying Melissas. Ohhhh, man, Melissas. Got a half-hour or so?)

Weirding Myself Out

I just wrote 1,150 words about a high school classmate with whom I've never spoken in my entire life. I wrote about his tall, skinny build, his luxurious voice, his spiked blond hair, his unconventional good looks, and the dreaminess of his hazel eyes whenever he leaned back against the wall. I wrote about everything he symbolized to me that I could not even begin to understand until eight years after graduation.

Am I the only person who had one of those, or did you have one, too?

An Exercise in Paranoia

The problem with your wedding night is that it's one of the few nights in your adult life when hundreds of people are dead certain, or at least reasonably well-assured, of what you are doing.

It seems paradoxical that it's supposed to be this intimate night behind closed doors, a time so sacred to you and your spouse. . . and yet, its events might as well be public knowledge. Almost a cliche.

Whether or not others care to admit it, they're all somehow in on the festivities. Maybe they're single, bitter, and envious. Maybe they're having flashbacks to their own long-ago wedding nights and calculating exactly when the honeymoon ended. Maybe they're cringing and struggling not to picture it because they don't think you're so great together. Or maybe they're coming home from the reception in a drunken stupor, mischievously nudging each other and snorting, "I'll bet I know what the happy couple is doing RIGHT AT THIS VERY SECOND."

They couldn't say that on most other nights. They weren't saying that on, for instance, your prom night in high school. Oh, maybe they could speculate, but it wasn't so concrete. What kids do after their proms seems like a cloudy, hazy abstraction. Sure, they might go to the all-night party up at the lake. . . or they might be so wholesome as to go to Denny's and then crash innocently on a couch at home. Maybe they do. Maybe they don't.

Your wedding night, on the other hand, isn't like that. No matter who you are, wholesomeness will never stand a chance of winning out. People figure that you're pretty much guaranteed to have raunchy sex. Perhaps they're even imagining the details while you're doing it.

Your in-laws, parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, friends, siblings, and the officiator at the ceremony are all aware that it's obligatorily one of the most X-rated nights of your life to date. Just you take a minute and try to wrap your mind around that one.

You check into the honeymoon suite at the hotel. Don't think you're particularly good at keeping that grin off your face. Don't think the guys behind the counter are going to be clueless about your red-hot, scorching intentions. At this point, it's official: Nobody with half a brain is.

Granted, that may not necessarily be a bad thing. In fact, for the spotlight-hungry types who enjoy bragging and advertising their every encounter, it could seem like just the opposite. Whether I myself would love or loathe this situation remains to be learned. And, ya know what. . . if I denied my eagerness to step into the eye of the vortex and find out the answer, I'd be the biggest liar this world has ever seen.

Watery Themes

Lately, I'm profoundly attached to the riverfront. I must have gone there at least half a dozen times in the last month. Before waking up this morning, I literally had three different dreams about it. I just can't seem to stay away for long.

Make no mistake about it, the riverfront will be the setting of my next date with myself. . . myself and NOBODY else. Maybe I'll pencil it into my calendar.

My New Word

Springles n. Tingles that occur only in the spring.

Forgive Tonight's Clunky Writing Style; I'm Tired

I want to start reading again.

When did this happen to me? You know how it is when you don’t recognize a person anymore? Well, that’s how I feel about myself.

I wasn’t always such a magazine girl. I used to read things besides blogs and e-mails and the occasional newspaper. My bookcase wasn’t always half-stocked with photos and blank CDs. In fact, I grew up with my nose perpetually in a book. That’s what people knew me for: the fact that I could not and would not stop reading for anything. Scholastic book fairs were among the great joys of my elementary school life. Trips to the bookstore were my personal definition of heaven. I actually welcomed the summer reading lists for my English classes in high school. What’s more, I spent hours upon hours hiding out in a library corner instead of socializing during lunch. Let’s face it, I was a huge nerd and I probably wouldn’t have had it any other way.

I think college was when it all changed. . . maybe spring 2001. Yep, I’d say spring 2001 was the point where I officially stopped reading for recreation. At the time, I felt weary of college textbooks and overwhelmed by all kinds of other priorities. I’m pretty sure the number of books I’ve read in the last six years hasn’t even touched double-digit territory. Even if it has, it just barely has.

Something is missing from my life. I want to lose myself in a story’s plot again. . . work my imagination to the max. . . feel connected to the characters. . . feel excited and totally absorbed in the page before me. How could I have given it up for so long? How did I ever lose my focus on something so important?

Frankly, I’m ashamed of myself. I’m hanging my head because I feel dependent on so many sources of sensory stimulation at the same time, and blaring sensory stimulation isn’t really life, it’s just a short-term substitute for it. When I get on the treadmill, I can’t bear to be alone with my own quiet thoughts anymore. Ohhhh, nooooo, I have to turn on the TV right away. . . and put on my headphones. . . and listen to music while watching TV at the same time. . . and it’s all so empty-feeling, especially if I’m watching a crappy movie just to distract myself from the fact that I’m on the treadmill. I mean, don’t get me wrong, the treadmill is great. I think it’ll make my body a hell of a lot stronger in the next few months. What does that matter, though, if my mind is decaying at the same time? Who really wants to share life with a physically fit person who is stupid?

I want to go to the library and seek out a book that really interests me to the depths of my soul. I’d love to broaden my horizons, expand my meaningful experience base, and have something intellectual to discuss with people. After all, I’m sick of having conversations about whatever fitness tip or recipe I saw in a magazine the other day. I need less TV and more books. (Music is still fine. Essential, even. TV, though? I swear, it’s so much better to watch nothing at all than to watch a movie that is truly bad. . . one you’d never watch in a million years if not for your multi-tasking compulsions. Of course, it’s different if you’re laughing at the movie’s or TV show’s sheer, unadulterated badness with a group of friends. However, that’s usually not the case for me.)

I need to sit under a tree branch on a sunny, shimmery day and read. Just read. Not on the treadmill. . . at least, not right away. I need to rediscover what it’s like to give a book my undivided attention, and I know exactly what that book is going to be.

Wow

So, um, you know that thing I wrote on April 29?

Well, I want you to take the statement I wrote that day and multiply it by about, oh, let's say...500.

WOW.

I'm Alive

No, I haven't forgotten that this blog exists. I'm just having trouble coming up with anything to write that is publishable. Check back later.

The Double Standard I Can't Help

Don't get me wrong. I'm not the type who would ever act on this sentiment, nor who would condone acting on it...but...

Why do men's levels of desirability and general hotness seem to skyrocket when they snag attractive women (no matter how unremarkable those men seemed before), while the same isn't necessarily true if you swap the genders around? I can't be the only one who has noticed this trend. I've been wondering about it for hours and still can't figure it out.

What are your theories?

I No Longer Know Myself

I don't think I'm a night person anymore, Toto.

Thank You, Comedian Whose Name Eludes Me

So I'm going through all these old files on my computer. Apparently, I went to see a stand-up comedian in my freshman year of college. I can't remember his name for the life of me, but I must have been impressed enough to write down a bunch of his jokes afterwards. Here ya go...hope you enjoy them as much as I did...

“Anyone having a bad day? You know what I do when I have a bad day? I take it out on other people. For example, I was driving in my car the other day. I looked in the rearview mirror and saw a family in the car behind me. They were all drinking hot chocolate, so I slammed on my brakes.”

“Does anybody really like Spam? They just came out with Spam Lite. As if anybody ate so much Spam that it was a concern for their body weight. There probably aren’t too many people going around saying, ‘Yea, I can eat twice as much Spam now!’ "

“When my wife feels like being sexy, she talks in w’s. ‘I wuv you, my widdle honey.’ It makes me feel like saying, ‘I wuv you, too. OK, I think I’ll weave now.’ I mean, who really wants to be in bed with Elmer Fudd?”

“Remember that blizzard on New Year’s Eve last year? Well, I was driving on the thruway that day, and I saw my proctologist in the next car. It was so hard to see, he had to look through the little hole in the windshield.”

“We were crazy kids at Christmas. We used to suck on our candy canes until the ends got really sharp, and then we would stab each other. The doctor could never figure out where those wounds came from!”

“Every Christmas, we set out hot chocolate and cookies for Santa. Well, one year, my brother decided to put some X-Lax in the hot chocolate. The next day, my dad was in the bathroom all day, saying, ‘I hate you kids!’ "

“My mom is at the stage where she says things that almost make sense, but don’t. Like, I told her I was going to buy an answering machine. She said, ‘Why? You’re never home.’ "

“My brother does that, too. It must run in the family. I told him I would pay him twenty bucks to mow my lawn, and he said, ‘For twenty bucks, I’d do it for free!’ "

“You know how AT&T is coming out with those little pocket phones? I told my mom about those. She asked, ‘Oh, are they cordless?’ "

"Speaking of which, I got my parents a cordless phone, and they’re not quite sure how to use it. They used to talk on the phone standing next to the base unit. So I said, ‘No, Dad, you can walk with that phone.’ Next time I saw him, he was walking around with the phone, CARRYING the base unit. I told him, ‘No, you don’t NEED to be near the base unit.’ So, afterwards, I saw him driving off in the car while talking on the phone, and I was like, ‘No, Dad, that’s just a LITTLE too far!’ "

“Wal-Mart is selling tires now. That’s good for the typical Wal-Mart customer, because now they can fix up underneath their house. I usually get booed for that one. You know why? The reason they boo me is because they can’t whistle, they’re missing their front teeth!”

“You know who Bill Clinton should have dated instead of Monica Lewinsky? He should have dated Lorena Bobbitt. Then, if it were her word against his, she would have the evidence in court and it wouldn’t cost our country forty million dollars to find out the truth.”

“I’m Italian. Italians have their own way of expressing things. They say Italians have a temper. If you find yourself tied up and with stab wounds, it’s an Italian’s subtle way of saying you cut them off on the road. They also have a lot of body hair. Italians usually have tons of hair under their arms and it makes them look like they have gorillas in a headlock.”

“You know why all Italian guys are named Tony? It’s because, when the Italians first immigrated to America, they got letters stamped on their foreheads that spelled out, TO N.Y.”

“My grandmother loves to feed people. Even if you were at the table with her and choking to death, she’d still stuff your face. I found out that my grandpa doesn’t walk the way he does because he’s old. It’s because of all those peppers.”

“I hate flying because there’s always the risk that the airplane roof will fly off. It kind of gives new meaning to the term ‘Flying sucks!’ And then there are those obnoxious little kids sitting next to you. . . you know, the ones who go to the bathroom all the time and then come back with a little blue squirt gun and splash you in the face. Why do people say flying is so much safer than driving? It’s not like, if your car runs out of gas, you’re going to plummet forty thousand feet.”

“Anybody ever get road rage? You can never predict when you’re going to get road rage, but everybody gets it. Sometimes, it gets ridiculous. Once, I flipped off a DOG for running across the road in front of me. I doubt the dog even cared. It was one of those big, old dogs. . . you know, the kind that just waddles around looking so non-threatening and out of it that burglars aren’t scared by them at all.”

“If you go to a Catholic school, you know how vicious those nuns can be. I once met a kid who switched from a public school to a private school and started doing a lot better in math. I asked him why and he said, ‘When you walk into a classroom and see a big cross hanging on the wall to stand for a plus sign and they threaten to beat you with it if you do something wrong, you know they mean business!’ "

One-Sided Advice Column

Never carry a wiggling dog in one arm and a full cup of tea in the other hand. Especially not while you're wearing a brand-new, very valuable shirt.

Granted, I just did this very thing without spilling a drop. But don't try it, anyway.

"I Respect People So Much That I Completely Stay Away From Them!"

Hi. It's a pleasure to meet you. I am one of the lamest and awkwardest 26-year-olds you will ever encounter.

In the presence of just about anyone (especially anyone whose anatomy includes a penis), it becomes my destiny -- an unofficial requirement, really -- that I will say a minimum of four ditzy things. I'm not talking about "slightly ditzy," either. I'm referring to the brand of ditziness that makes people think very seriously about bashing some sense into my head.

My intellect plummets and crashes to the ground like violent, heavy sheets of rain.

I juggle armfuls of stuff, drop the aforementioned stuff all over the floor, and crash into people and/or stationary objects with the force and fanfare of a water buffalo.

My voice gets extremely giddy, causing every sentence to end in a question mark or an exclamation point. Either that, or it sounds extremely lifeless and flat. Never anywhere in between. Never, never, never.

Without even realizing it, I scramble up the order of my words (which are often poorly chosen) and arrange the structure of my sentences in a most puzzling, unconventional fashion.

I cough and clear my throat incessantly, but to no avail.

I make dumb, "filler" observations, or ask questions whose answers are perfectly obvious, all for the purpose of avoiding silence.

I laugh. A lot. At things that aren't even remotely funny. Nervous laughter.

I stuff forkfuls of food into my mouth at the precise moment that someone speaks to me. Sometimes, I respond to this development by immediately spilling food on my shirt.

Maybe these sound like mindless, mechanical habits, but I'm fully cognizant that they occur. Maybe that's the problem. The more I think about them, the more I seem to do them. All. Of. The. Time.

There are probably hundreds of charm schools out there that would watch my behavior for 10 minutes and laugh me clean out of the place. "Get outta here," they'd say. "Get real. We can accomplish a lot of things, great things, really impressive things, but we're not in the business of performing miracles."

Not that I'd completely blame them.

Randomness, Part I

How to feel really, insanely fat:
1) Wear elastic-waistband sweatpants.
2) See 1), above.

Now that THAT'S outta the way...

I just have to share this exciting news with you. Yesterday, I went to what I assumed would be the MySpace page of one of my newly-discovered bands. Ya know, write www.myspace.com with /bandname after it, pretty basic formula. Well, lo and behold, it wasn't that band's MySpace page, but it WAS some random person's profile that featured a song I'd been wanting to find for the last 10 YEARS! Yeah, really! I heard it 10 years ago and never got the name of it and never, ever thought I'd hear it again! How lucky is that!

I'm not convinced there are many songs at all that I've ever really liked and not been able to get ahold of. Even if it's wildly obscure, even if it's all instrumentals, I always manage to find it. Somehow. Eventually. I never forget. Mwahahaha.

Why am I writing in this blog on a gorgeous day?

P.S. This post contains more clunky sentences than I care to admit.

Treadmillholics

Never underestimate the power of endorphins!

New Era

It's a remarkably tranquil night, belying the pressures of the weekend ahead. I'm seeking solace in my neon green slinky, my Baked Apple Pie candle, the Tahiti 80 music which amiably floods the air. I can hardly believe I'm blogging again, but somehow, amazingly, here I am.

I won't reveal much on here about my identity, since I feel that a loss of anonymity would sorely hinder my writing style. Not just that, but I tend to be a worrier and somewhat paranoid about who's reading my stuff. Therefore, you're never going to find my real name or location anywhere in this blog. Not just that, but I have a policy of never publishing any details about a person that I wouldn't say to that person's face. Soooo, if you're looking for juicy and malicious gossip, move right along. You're not going to find anything of the sort here.

What you'll find instead is a quiet, competitive, slightly odd girl in her mid-20s. Like so many others in their mid-20s, I'm just trying to find my way and my place in life without screwing things up too abysmally. I feel that I have plenty to share with the world, but am not too clear on exactly what that is. I make mistakes all the time, I closely examine and learn from them, and I strive not to obsess over what could be better in my life. Note that, while I say I strive, it doesn't necessarily mean I succeed. In a nutshell, I live on the hope that my 30s will be far more focused and coherent than my 20s have been so far. At this point, that's probably all you need to know about me.

This is far from my first foray into the great land of blogging. I kept a blog from early 2002 until summer 2004 (and I believe it's still floating around out there somewhere, but it'll be a cold day in hell before I can remember how to locate it). I then blogged on MySpace for a while, but that lost its novelty and became a nuisance rather fast. That leads me...right here. Starting over. Starting fresh, so symbolically. There's a newly blank slate behind me and a whole world of possibilities opening up.

Maybe I'm doing this for mostly selfish reasons. At day's end, I want to be myself...to lessen my fear of vivid details and deep, probing communication. I don't know if I even have an audience at all, but if you're reading this, I want to do something to sweep you away. I want to imagine you're feeling some of what I'm feeling. I want to make some difference in your days, and I want to connect with you.