Tag: blogging

dating, humor, personal writing

a peaceful, easy feeling

mycrookedrainbow

For some reason, “a peaceful, easy feeling” came to mind when I was thinking about how I’m feeling right now. Does that line come from something? It must. Help me out here – a song for a laundry detergent commercial? A car? Oh Christ, I bet it’s the Eagles. Now, I don’t know about you, but I happen to be in agreement with the Dude, aka Mr. Lebowski, with regard to the Eagles. Namely, “I hate the f*&^ing Eagles, man!” Well, maybe it’s not the Eagles, but I’m too damned lazy to google it.

Nonetheless a peaceful easy feeling sorta describes where I’m at right now, and I’m like, “Huh, what is this strange, strange feeling I’m experiencing? What? I’m sorry – you said you’re called Calm? Oh, hello, Calm, I’m Pollyanna, I don’t think we’ve met – pleased to make your acquaintance!”

Anywho…. Remember how I mentioned the profound relief I felt because I was virtually certain I’d gotten a rejection from that job that would have involved uprooting my entire life and moving to a different state?

Guess what. Yep. I got the offer.

Guess what else? Yep. Much to the chagrin of the hiring manager, I turned it down.

I know, I know. After all my expressions to him of how perfect a match this job and I were… once I learned the nitty gritty details, I realized the costs far outweighed the benefits.

And yup, I hid under a proverbial rock for hours and hours after that call, and every time the conversation crosses my mind now I shudder like an arctic blast just blew through.

I told the guy – and this is true! – my setback with my medical condition (which happened just prior to the final interview) indicated I wasn’t as far along in the post op recovery process as I should be to take on a big new job in another state.

The hiring manager first tried to push back and extol the virtues of their health benefits, until he heard me say my sorry a$$ one sentence spiel again and realized this wasn’t me trying to negotiate, this was me being like, Uh yeahhhh, NO.

So he’s all, “well, maybe next time you’ll have learned your limitations and only apply to jobs you can actually do.”

And I’m all, 😳😳😳😳😳😳.

You can now see the sudden appeal of the proverbial rock, amirite?

So I’m now finally crawling out from under that rock, and I gotta say that the peaceful easy feeling is all about the removal of that stressor from my life. It’s like that sh!t was weighing on me, without me even realizing how much. But now that I don’t have to move away from my bff, friends, and family here, I’m doing virtual cartwheels and happy backflip somersaults – only virtual though, cuz DAMN I wasn’t kidding about the setback – the.pain.is.real.

And no, I know what you’re thinking – y’all have no poker face! Nope, this was NOT about Professor Cute Butt. I may be a one marshmallow girl, but I was super disciplined in my deliberations and did NOT let A Man (shudder) enter into the equation or affect my decision one way or the other on this job.

But he made it SO HARD, you guys.

I mean, in addition to the whole ‘I’m getting a puppy’ phone call that I described in the last post, Prof. CB endeared himself to me further when he said, as I was weighing the job offer, “I’ll visit you there if you take it!” And then pointing a finger back and forth between me and him, “I mean, if this is going to work, it’s going to work.” (!!) Add to that he brought over champagne – champagne! – to celebrate that I’d gotten the offer, and I got all gooey like a damned sap hound. (Where on earth do I come up with these weird non-saying sayings?) ((Don’t answer that. It could be the amyloid plaques most certainly starting to make their tendrily way through my brain.))

Anyway, so I got, but did not take, the crazy job. And also, I think you could say Professor Cute Butt and I are kinda sorta dating. (Sure, it helps that I’m now not moving two states away. Obvi.) Get this, there was a FOREHEAD KISS, people. Like we had a lunch date at the park, and were looking arm in arm out at the view, and before I knew what was happening, he planted a kiss on my forehead. My forehead. And you all know what a forehead kiss means (well, with someone you have good real kisses with too – forehead kiss in place of good real kisses is just BadNews). I think he might actually like me like me? Huh. 🤔

But of course, one of my very first thoughts after the forehead kiss and subsequent inner cartwheel somersaults, was, “Uh oh, will this kill my blog?” But no, I’m being serious: what if I get happy? Happiness kills all forms of art, you know. (And yeah, I know it’s a bit of a stretch to call this sh!t you’re reading “art” but humor me this once.)

My point is: This peaceful, easy feeling does not bode well for my (imaginary) book deal, y’all. I mean, other than Michael Franti, who the F writes when they’re happy?!

Oh sh!t, you know who, don’t you.

I remember now.

The Eagles.

God damn it, I hate the f*%^ing Eagles, man.

dating, humor, personal writing

the absurdities of dating, life, and other forms of torture

mycrookedrainbow

A friend learned I was writing a blog. She wanted to know what it was about.

Sheepishly, I text back, oh, it’s just silly, light and fluffy stuff, you know, about the absurdities of dating, life, and other forms of torture.

And I stopped short – Huh, I like that! I need to remember that for … The Blog!

So does this mean the blogging bug has bit? Cuz I’m like writing down stuff that I am afraid to forget – and not the grocery list or the “fold clothes” or “take shower” notes I write down for myself because I will forget – but little nuggets like that one, sudden thought bubbles about the oddities of experience, that I don’t want to forget – not for myself, but to share?

…Huh. Interesting….

Toto, are we not in Kansas anymore? Has my decade-long writer’s block been broken by giving myself permission to just write about stupid sh!t? Stupid sh!t in an age of deadly serious political savagery and vast and deepening social injustices when I should be too ashamed to laugh at such trivialities? All I needed was TOTAL DISSOCIATION FROM MY SELF? All I needed to write a pseudonym? Polyyanna Savage, you are my hero. You, my pseudonym, make me untouchable. Just as untouchable as that dude over there in his car at a red light picking his nose and looking at it. Behind the car glass – it is GLASS, Dude! – he feels emboldened by the illusion of anonymity to be just who he is! Oh man, he’s going back in for more. Well, you do you, Dude. You do you.

So is this how it’s gonna be? Me finally taking after my father who always had index cards and pen in his shirt pocket (Dad, your pen leaked again!) just so he wouldn’t ever have to forget a good idea for a future academic paper?

Well, cool. I’m okay with that. For Dad, it was writing about Science!, and the Great Tragedies of the Human Condition. For me, it’s writing about Silly Sh!t and the Great Nonsense of the Human Condition.

AKA The Absurdities of Dating, Life, and Other Forms of Torture.

Yeah, OK, the bug has bit.

Amen.

dating, humor, personal writing

my crooked rainbow

mycrookedrainbow

This is my first post.

You do not know who the f*ck I am. And you know what? Neither do I, if I’m being real. So we have that in common.

Welcome!

So when I was little, I liked to draw rainbows. I would tear off a giant piece of paper and gather all my best markers. I would put everything I needed out on the floor, my tongue hanging out of the corner of my mouth (as it does, er, did, whenever concentration’s required). With the artistic grace of a rhinoceros, I colored at least with passion- red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple. Setting out from the bottom left hand corner of the page, I’d make my way, laboriously, up the page, with what I thought was a pretty good rendition of that glorious multi-colored arc sometimes spotted outside after storms. It was just when I would get to the apex of the arc that I would realize I was already within about an inch or two of the right hand edge of the page. @%#!!

Somehow, all my rainbows turned out this way – they looked good from left to right, until you got to that right-hand side of the page, where my rainbow would take a precipitous ninety-degree turn just as it approached the edge and head down in a fierce straight line to the bottom of the page.

I like now to think of this oddball freak of nature as my crooked rainbow.

What happened in the intervening years is this – LIFE.

Life, people. And this life has been sparklingly beautiful and also shockingly brutal. More on that later. For now, let’s just say – IT’S HARD TO BE A PERSON.

So life happened. Sh*t happened. Trauma happened. And I became a person who used to draw crooked rainbows but now looks at the sky waiting, not for rainbows, but for the other shoe.

The other shoe, in my mind, dangles like goddamn Damocles’ sword.

My crooked rainbow is resiliency incarnate. It is a beautiful thing. A little girl, tongue hanging out of mouth, determined to have a beautiful life.

But the other shoe? The other shoe is my worst enemy. What is it, though, that the stoic philosopher, Seneca said? “We suffer more in imagination than reality.”

That’s what I’m talking about. The other shoe. Even if waiting for that other shoe is like waiting for goddamn Godot. Even if that other shoe is all in my goddamn head. Here we are. And so we wait.

Care to wait with me? I think I can promise it’ll be an interesting ride. Full of mixed metaphors, wack wisdom, alarming analogies, and things that make you go, “Huh.” (That last one should be a song, by the way – preferably a RAP song.)

Pleased to meet you. TTYL.