It’s at the point where every new symptom I have I’m like, omg is labor imminent?
We noticed upon returning from today’s doctor appointment (done meeting all the docs in the practice!) that my belly has definitely done some dropping today.
OMG am I gonna go into labor tomorrow?
No, Alison. You’re not. Shutup.
I don’t deal well with anticipatory anxiety, can you tell?
I forgot to put on deodorant today.
I’m a little warm.
Shit’s about to get real.
Jonny’s yelling at me to post something so he doesn’t have to see Michael C. Hall’s old David face.
So…
Okay…here’s a story. This one time, I caught on fire while cooking pasta. I was wearing my robe, which has big terry cloth sleeves, as robes are sometimes wont to have, and as I was cooking tomatoes for sauce, my right sleeve caught some of the flame from the burner. I only vaguely remember what happened after that, just that my sleeve went up and somehow the flames went up to the back of the neck of the robe. I was screaming and shucked the thing off me, stomping on it. Jonny, hearing the commotion, came out and helped me stomp out the flames.
Miraculously, I was totally fine, other than some singed hair along my neckline, and my shaken confidence. I handled it with my standard use of complete self-deprecation. Still do…often I’ll look at Jonny and say, hey, remember that time I caught on fire? That was funny. [except not.]
I learned a valuable lesson though: put on real clothes when cooking. Cuz I mean, it’s not obvious or anything.
So on the train this morning, I chose a listening selection a bit unusual for me these days. I chose to listen to Ani Difranco’s Not a Pretty Girl. An album I have not listened to in yeeeeears. One that I was obsessed with in high school. And as I listened, I got to thinking about that.
Did I really listen to the lyrics back then? I mean, I know I knew them all and sang them out loud at concerts and whatever. And I know I thought I was all FEMALE EMPOWERMENT and DON’T LET THE MAN DICTATE WHAT YOU CAN OR CAN’T DO and FUCK YEAH WOMEN!!! but, I mean. Let’s be honest. I was a fairly well-off suburban kid with no fucking worries except that the boy I loved didn’t love me back. This shit wasn’t talking to me. It wasn’t meant to. It was a fight song for those who were really not like me at all.
Rest assured, I’m not bashing on the other side…I’m bashing on my own. It was just…so not aware. So not aware. And yes, I was in high school and I was a dumb kid and what did I know about anything…and yes! That’s the truth. But here’s the thing:
I thought I knew everything about everything. And I mean everything. About everything. I was all, I’m wise beyond my years and an “old soul” and on an emotional level different than that of my peers…and honestly, if I was thinking that about myself? Probably, most likely, not true. Yes, my sense of drama and emotional outbursting was fairly well developed (anyone else regularly cry at social gatherings? no? just me then? okay…figures), but really, I knew shit about shit. I was as enlightened as the nice earphones and/or stereo speakers through which I was listening to all this enlightened music.
And so, as I was listening to Ani’s words about working hard her whole life and dealing with sexism and abortion and things that I had absolutely no, none, zero, zip experience with back then, I was feeling kinda dumb about how absolutely fucking clueless I really really was. And it’s okay, I guess, because I’m realizing now. I have dealt with some of those things now, in my life as a 30-something adult. And I see it now. And I’m aware now. And I know I do not, in any way, know everything. I still know pretty much nothing, because you always have more to learn.
I just hope when I look back on myself in another 15 plus years I am not as mortified at my ridiculous beliefs and actions as I was this morning, on the train, listening to music of my relative youth and really, for the first time, HEARING its message.
Have any of y’all seen Mulholland Drive? Hot damn is that one confusing film. I saw it with my old roommate, Jill, on Christmas Eve of 2000, I think. Afterwards, we went to French Roast and dissected it, writing out the plot and the different characters and what we thought was the timeline and story of the movie onto a napkin. We were determined to figure out what we’d just seen. It was fun and weird and creepy and we had a great time.
Side story…the young fellow who was waiting on us was super cute and was chatting us up and being all sweet and stuff. Jill was trying to convince me to ask him out, but I was too shy to do it in person. So I paid with my credit card (so he could see my name), wrote my phone number on top of the receipt and said goodbye real sweetly as we walked out the door. When we got home, our caller ID had one missed call from French Roast—he had called some time within our two block walk home. However, he did not leave a message, so it’s likely that he just called to see if it was actually our number. As in, did this chick really just leave her phone number on her receipt for me to call? Needless to say, I never heard from him.
I did see him again, though…at French Roast on some random evening. He was working, I was there with a friend. I saw him talk to another waiter and kind of gesture in my direction. In my head I like to think he was saying “there’s that cute girl…god, I really missed out on that chance” but in all likelihood he was probably saying, “ah ha, there’s that dork who left me her number!” Man, I had no game.
Anyway, this is all coming to my head and now your dashboard because I was thinking how I hadn’t posted anything in a while and I was being all silent and shit. And I kept seeing the brunette character saying “Silencio” in Mullholland Drive in my head.
Trains of thought….you know…
…my prom was in Manhattan, and afterwards we drove out to some shitty motel in the Hamptons for a night or two. Because I was dramatic, and in love with someone other than my aforementioned date (but dude had a girlfriend and was all kinds of dramz and yep, I fucking loved that shit), I basically skulked around the motel, drank a lot, and acted crazy. Because that’s how I did it back then. Mature, right?
Oh, also…a few of us had driven our cars out to the motel a few days prior, so they’d be there to carpool back home. I was one of them. That seemed to escape my attention when gathering my things together before I left my house, because as we drove up to the motel at, oh, 6 in the morning, I saw my car, gasped and realized I had forgotten my keys**. Unfortunately this type of stuff happened all the time, back then. See? Mature!
Anyway, this is all meant to say that prom? Was dumb. For real.
**see also: Stupid Saddle archives.
One time, at brunch, the waiter said the special was french toast with lingonberries. I’d never heard of a lingonberry, so I assumed he was saying Lincolnberries. So I made some kind of joke about them serving Log Cabin brand syrup to go with it.
Ha. Cuz Lincoln? Log cabins? Syrup? French toast? Get it? Ha. Ha.
No one laughed and they all kind of looked at me funny. I didn’t get why.
I think I attempted to make a couple of other jokes about it before Jonny realized what was going on and kindly corrected me.
Lingonberries.
Oh.
I was talking to SMM this morning and she was like oh, I figured if anyone could relate to beating yourself up about hundred year old things it would be you. (YES!!) And I was like, dude, once I mispronounced ska. Like how do you even do that? It only has the three letters. (I mean, not if you…
I once was talking to someone and referring to a gazelle, the animal, but pronounced it Giselle, the model, and immediately felt like the dumbest person EVER.
