here today

 

Communication

They say opposites attract and they are right. 

Take tonight, for example.  And why are we taking tonight as an example, you ask?  Because it's Friday night and I am blogging.  Friday night after Thanksgiving and I had the day off and I'm drinking a beer and I'm blogging.

That is sad. 

That is marriage.

That is marriage to my opposite.

I'm going to take a moment here in an ode to Black Butte Porter.  I love most porters.  They are dark and delicious and chocolate-y and oh so good.  But Black Butte has a special place in my heart and home.  It's local and it's strong and it's malty and it kicks ass.

Back to my evening which has now disintegrated into me pouting in the office while Ben stalks around the kitchen.  Back to marrying the person you are attracted to instead of someone who understands you and someone that you understand. 

Aeii.  I am going to make this one a cliffhanger.  I am going to attempt one more time to communicate  (and grab myself another porter in the process - hmmm. maybe that's why he's in the kitchen).  I am going to leave the blog and enter Real Life.

I'll let you know how it goes. 

 

 

Posted by: 120pages at 18:49 | link | comments (2) |

risk

the older I get, and today, sitting at my desk at the insurance agency, I feel old.  The older I get, the lower my tolerance for risk.  this seems an obvious statement.  of course I am more risk-averse.  there is more to lose, more at stake.  the husband, the dog, the house, the job, the life I've made here slowly bit by bit. 

but actually, as I'm writing this, I don't think that's it.  I think the real difference is that I'm not willing to give up what I've got for dumb stuff, for stupid risks.  for example, buying dime bags on the streets.  of New York.  or worse, acid.  Boy, was that stupid.  (and it made my jaws hurt for about a week).  or making that u-turn in front of a cop at a red light.  or scanning in parking permits and printing my own.   Dumb, dumb, dumb.  What I got in return was so little - a short high, a good story for the other kids in traffic school, avoiding lines at the DMV.

when I think about risk now, I think about big risk and big return.  Not dumb risk and little return. 

that's why I've decided to direct my next script.  Risk everything in the hopes that I will get everything.  Or get on my way to everything.  I am done hiding behind bravado and the sentence "I'm fine if I never make it anywhere - this is what I want and I've got it already".  The truth is, I'm happy with so much of my life.  The truth also is, I want so much more.

So, ya. Hoo.  I'm making a movie.

Posted by: 120pages at 10:20 | link | comments (2) |

4 a.m.

My sister and I were clearly labeled as children. My mom likes to compartmentalize. My mom LIVES to compartmentalize. So, I was the smart one and my sister was pretty. I got good grades and she charmed.

My dad, like most men, loves cute flirty girls. I'm not a cute flirty girl. I don't know how to do it ---- coy looks? downcast eyes?, giggles? Not me. I'm the combative flirt. Male in my need to banter, to fight. Love Is A Battlefield.

So, my sister was and is the favorite. The baby. Daddy's girl. When she was around, she was the center, the star, dancing for attention and getting it.

So I took mornings. And for my dad, mornings meant 4a.m. I was little, maybe 6 or 7, when I started waking up before sunrise to go to the track with and help him train for marathons. I'd run a mile or so and he'd circle past me, giving me tips on how to spit in the dirt without slowing down. Then we'd come home and make eggs and read the paper. Nobody else in the house was awake. Just me and Dad.

I loved those mornings.

Before I go to work at the insurance agency, I get up early to write. I complain, I pretend that I hate my schedule, that it's awful. I tell people I've stopped doing it so religiously. I'm not crazy, I say. But, in truth, I am. I get up early and the house is quiet and it's just me and my words on the screen, 2 cups of tea, Lucy snoozing nearby. Then Lu and I go for a run through the neighborhood, peeking in windows, waving at the guy on the bike.

In the cold and the rain, panting on the hills, I often think about being 6, circling behind my dad. The little girl on the track trying so hard to keep up makes me sad. I wish I'd kept sleeping, or carved out my own place instead of wanting so badly to take one that was already filled.

4 a.m. I spit in the dirt, and keep on running.

Posted by: 120pages at 10:55 | link | comments (1) |

and they procreate

Lasagna seems a simple dish.  It is not.  It requires many mixing bowls, more ingredients than anyone tasting it will ever know that you used, and the ability to do ten things at once.  When completed, it looks like something you smushed together and covered with grated cheese.  It does not look like something that required a bechamel sauce with freshly grated nutmeg.  I will never make it again. 

I don't enjoy cooking.  I just like to impress my guests.  I like to look like I spent all day making the meal and I like my food to be pretty.  And I like compliments on how complicated the meal is, how much time I must have spent, and how pretty it all looks. 

G's birthday.  Ben spent two weeks searching for the perfect vinyl record for G.  He did research.  He went to garage sales, music stores and online chat rooms.  I made the damn lasagna.  We ate together, G loved his gift, we had Abbot's Table, our group favorite wine, G & N complimented us on the pear salad that Ben threw together at the last minute, and the evening was off to a great start.

Then I went down to the basement for another bottle of wine.  (No, we do not have a wine cellar.  We just put it down there because our kitchen is so small.)  In any case, I went down for another bottle.  And that's when I saw my second centipede.  And this one... was a baby.  Which means one of three things:

1. The centipede that Ben took across the street and set free did, indeed, as I feared, come back to rejoin its mate and then to procreate.

this possibility has now moved to the top of my list of best possible scenarios.  because if it's not one lone centipede couple procreating, it's:

2. A centipede invasion.  Hordes of them.  Down in the basement eating spiders and having centipede babies and getting ready to storm the bed.

or.

3. One tiny angry centipede ready to avenge itself on the people who killed Mamma. 

In which case, I'll point to Ben.

Posted by: 120pages at 12:31 | link | comments (2) |

the O.C.

The O.C. is the best show on television.  Or at least it was last season.  I can't comment on this season because I couldn't see it.  The PVR, best thing since mint-flavored dental floss, rules our house.  We don't watch anything on the night that it's actually playing, because we Don't Have To.  We pause John Stewart because We Can.  I have loved, and probably will again love, my PVR.

Last night, however, the PVR decided to record some cop show where the guys all wear crumpled shirts and the girl cops wear tight pants and talk tough instead of recording the first episode of my beloved OC.  And my beloved O.C. is a stupid ass show that only plays one night a week at one specific time.  All the other shows range across the time zones, playing at 3am in Detroit, available for someone like me who can never remember what night of the week I need to sit down for The Apprentice, or Arrested Development or my secret vice, the painful Entourage. 

 Last night, instead of watching The O.C., I saw Stage Beauty, confident that my PVR was home working for me.  And Stage Beauty was not a good movie.  I exchanged a not very good movie with the terribly overeager and overactive Claire Danes as it's star for The O.C., where it is always sunny and there are many one-liners to be delivered with a certain urban angst that I love.  aeei.  The only saving grace of the evening was watching Billy Crudup touch his chin.  Man, that guy knows how to touch his own chin.  If you've seen the movie, and really, I wouldn't recommend it, you know what I mean by this.

so, yeah. tonight is The Apprentice.  Or so I think.

Posted by: 120pages at 16:48 | link | comments (2) |

class

I am taking a class.  And my teacher hates me.  And this is hard for me because really, I want everyone to love me.  Not just like me, but love me.  I want to be adored.  But in this class, by this teacher, I am not adored.

I have reacted so far by being very early every Saturday, sitting near the front, and turning in all assignments.  On time.  None of this has helped.  In fact, the hatred seems to be growing.  She reacted to my reading by saying that she just didn't get it.  I said, it's funny.  she said, that's not good enough.  and I don't think it's funny. 

So, last Saturday.  Class coming up at 9am.  I'm outside at my car, with my coffee mug at 8.  Ready to drive downtown, sit near the front, suffer and then whine afterwards to everyone.

Meow from inside the car?  I have no cats.  My last cat, Walter, stayed behind in L.A. because he had taken to peeing on my paintings.  But this cat isn't mine, and has crawled up near the engine and is wedged under the Buick howling.  Howling.  I shake the car.  I jump on the hood.  I crawl under the car, dirtying my tight jeans that I like to wear to class to make myself feel better about the teacher hating me.  The cat won't move.  Soon, Ben has joined me and we are alternating between swearing at the cat and cajoling it.  "Fuckin cat."   "here, kitty kitty kitty". 

Smart cat.  Stays put.  Ben wants to poke it with a stick so we get in a fight about the best way to get the cat out so I can make it to this class that I no longer want to go to but it cost so much money that I have to go.  Plus, the teacher hates me.  So, I have to prove to her that she's wrong. 

I get some sliced turkey and hold it under the car.  The cat yowls and hisses at me.  I'm tired.  It's almost 9.  My coffee is cold.  Poke it with a stick, I tell Ben.  He does.  The cat streaks down the street.  I am late to class.  My teacher glares.  I have to sit in the back.  Craig reads his script about robots taking over the earth.  The teacher tells him it's brilliant.  I hate him.  I hate her.  I hate the cat.  I smile, take notes, raise my hand, vow to leave by 7:30 next week.

 

 

 

Posted by: 120pages at 11:25 | link | comments |