Damsel and the City September 16, 2008

It’s 12:41 p.m. right now and I am drinking a homemade attempt at a White Russian while sitting on a couch in a temporary apartment on the island of Manhattan in the city of New York.
 
My new home.
 
Fourteen days ago, I gave my office a single week’s notice. I dyed my hair one kickass red after unintentionally catching the finale of Shear Genius – taking the show as encouragement to continue my unwillingness to stay with the same hair color for more than a few months. And I said goodbye to my friends and to my Chicago, the city that saw me evolve from a 22 year old who went out six of seven nights a week with guys whose official names never went beyond “Penn State Hockey Player” or “The Tall One” in her cell phone to a 25 year old who dyes her hair at 11pm after a quick dash to her local 24-hour Walgreens to retrieve some L’Oreal Feria and notifies her office less than a week before she plans to leave her job.
 
Because progress can come in many different ways.
 
In the last year, I’ve felt something that could probably be called restlessness. Not anxiety, really, because believe me when I say there is a distinct difference between these two. Anxiety is finding yourself in your senior year of college with an out-of-town ex-boyfriend who stalks and threatens you, with parents who push you to the brink of popping pills every minute you feel lucid, and a social life that’s taken on a life of its own and is barreling everyone involved to ruination. (Hi, Lindsay Lohan? You have nothing on me and my friends circa 2005.) You know. For example’s sake.
 
Restlessness, on the other hand, can be found on the underbelly of a life that is seemingly fine. It’s that nagging feeling that you’ve become unmotivated. That you’re ready for more because you’ve conquered what you’ve already been given. And that maybe you’ve begun to settle and all those pesky dreams of yours are getting a little too dusty just sitting around not seeing fruition.
 
I guess I am a person who is happiest when life feels unknown and while I may be a prime candidate for liver failure or skin cancer or breast tumors, a life predictable will surely be the death of me.
 
But then last month, my boyfriend learned his company wanted him and his group to move to their New York office. And when a week after that, he decided to make that move, I didn’t give one fuck how ridiculous I may seem to anyone who doesn’t see life like me. The decision to move was easy. The decision to say yes to one damn fucking adventure was easy.
 
No job? I’ll find one.
 
No friends? I’ll bribe mine to all move with me or at least come visit 293843 times.
 
No certainty of what the next month, the next season, the next year may bring? Fucking yes please.
 
My co-worker Tom confessed during my office going-away party that he could never do what I’m doing. To make that decision to move to a different city so suddenly with no job or apartment or other details lined up to the nth degree. To change Life so suddenly.
 
Then again, Tom lives in the suburbs of Chicago and recently married his college girlfriend because – as he put it – I’m almost 30 and it’s probably the right thing to do. This comment after lecturing me for 20 minutes on why it’s so important to stay single as long as you can because life’s just better when you’re single, you know? 
 
I take it as a compliment that Tom could never see himself doing what I did. Because I can easily say, Vice versa, mon frère.
 
Tom-less and in New York means finally being in the city I’ve imagined living in since I was nine years old and read The Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler as an “HOW CAN I DO THIS SOMEDAY” tome of inspiration. A city I had thought I’d be moving to immediately after graduating from college three years ago and a place that I suspect can give me a run for my money (Ed. note: Literally. Fucking Chipotle is even more expensive here). I’ve already been threatened by my friend Pete that if I ever turn this blog into a “Why New York Is The Best Place In The World, Namely, Better Than Anywhere ELSE In The World” type of blog, he’ll hate me forever. But in response to that, I simply say, Well, we already hate each other!
 
And to please be sure to eat your heart out with this blog post’s title.
 
In my two weeks here, I’ve already learned a few New York specific things:

• Being invited to attend New York Fashion Week plays out as fabulously in real life as it does in your imagination. (And if you happen to sight Santino, you learn that he truly is that tall and that skinny.)
• If you knee a guy who throws his face into your boobs while he mumbles something about mmm boobies, he will call you a cuntasscoldbitch but he will also proceed to leave you alone. (Although this nugget of wisdom is most likely applicable everywhere.)
• Watching Law and Order: SVU when you actually live in New York encourages you to initiate a pepper spray run first thing in the morning. Because it’s already dark outside and you don’t want to end up dead behind a dumpster making that run right this minute.

I’m also learning that allowing yourself to truly enjoy a moment – no matter how cliché it is or maybe because of how cliché it is – can be a good thing. So yes to this blog post’s title. And yes to me pausing to breathe in the view of the Upper West side while running around the Jackie O Reservoir in Central Park the other morning because it just looked that damn inspiring.
 
But don’t be fooled. This damsel may be in a different city, but she’s still the same chick who likes her booze best when stiff and drunk in the middle of the day.

24 Going On 21 And 48 Months June 25, 2008

Let’s say you run into some trouble while attempting to make 100 Jello shots for your 25th birthday because you couldn’t stop at 40 or 60 or 75.  No. You felt only a hundred adequately said Fuck You 25, I’m Going To Have A Good Fucking Time Even With You.

 
The trouble you run into has nothing to do with the flavor selection process since there happens to be plenty of Roy G. Biv candidates at the grocery store to secure your very grown-up theme of “RAINBOW” quite easily.
 
Nor does it occur during the task of procuring all the necessary alcohol since a little more than half a handle of Smirnoff needed for the cherry and lemon and orange Jello flavors and the Jose for the lime and Bacardi for the strawberry will already be on hand in any self-respecting drunkard’s liquor collection.
 
No. When all seems smooth sailing, trouble, you learn, chooses to present itself in the unassuming matter of space.
 
That is, forcing you unsure of where exactly to store the little fuckers so they can set and become the desired Jello.
 
This is how I came to spend my birthday cleaning an overstuffed refrigerator and throwing away anything I wasn’t able to consume on the spot while trays of Jello shots covered every flat surface in my kitchen and living room once I realized air-conditioning my apartment to “very cold” wouldn’t cut it.
 
Luckily, I subscribe to the understanding that sacrifices must willingly be made sometimes for Jello shots. (Ed. note: Like, as another example, one’s commitment to remembering anything the next morning.) So I happily ate slices of cheese and drank glugs of orange juice and wondered why I hadn’t used cleaning out the fridge as an excuse in the past to stuff my gullet.
 
The sight was glorious after five hours. Rows and rows of shiny red, orange, yellow, and green three-quarter filled Dixie cups of boozed-up Jello ready for consumption as far deep as my refrigerator went. Bliss was mine.

Multiple this by five. Refrigerator rows.

 
Until I realized my next unforeseen debacle – securing a way to safely transport 100 Jello shots to a bar blocks away from my apartment, where everyone had been instructed to meet promptly by nine to scarf down some margaritas while awaiting the trolley that would take us all over the city.
 
A feat made even more difficult by the fact that water guns filled with tequila,

leis and streamers,

pointy birthday hats decorated with the faces of Ernie and Big Bird,

and multiple coolers filled with beer, more hard alcohol, and Sparks also had to be towed along.
 
This is about when I began to wonder why the hell we didn’t just tell everyone to meet us at our apartment and have the trolley pick us up from there.
 
(Ed. note: In case questions of my maturity level are now being raised, let me state for the record my boyfriend and I had thought to purchase a case of water bottles after clearing Target’s children section of all its birthday accessories. But once we realized we were only two people with four hands – two of which were mine (read: useless) – it was clear that some things would have to be left behind. And so went the bottles of water. And not, say, the pointy birthday hats. So yes. I certainly hope this clears up a thing or two about my maturity level.)
 
Thanks to one very large metal cookie sheet, yards and yards of tin foil and a boyfriend who was willing to carry everything else, we – as in, my Jello shots and I – were able to make it to The Blue Agave safely. All the more impressive, really, when you factor in my 5 inch heels, short little dress, and the overwhelming weight I had to carry on my shoulders knowing that I am now closer to the age of 50 than I am to the day I was born and a thank you to co-worker Michael for bringing my attention to that.
 
But where was I. Oh, right. The dress.
 
First of all, a hearty thank you to everyone who took the time to input in my last post. It was pretty great to see how you all voted. Each one, I think, got its fair share of supporters – although the heavy favorites appeared to be 1, 4, and 7.
 
Unfortunately, when push came to shoving myself into a tight little party dress (and why hadn’t I thought to find somewhere other than my stomach for all the food that couldn’t fit inside the fridge), I ended up wearing a party frock that was not one of the seven I begged you to dress me in while I stood around, hopeless and naked, until you did.
 
But. See.
 
Dress #1 – the one I affectionately referred to as my prom queen on acid – was only available in sizes 0 or 12. I think this was God’s way of teaching me a little thing about my love for extremes.
 
Dress #2 would have totally passed muster. Had I been in the mood to look like a naughty nurse for my birthday. In hindsight, I wonder why I wasn’t.
 
Dresses #3, #4, #6, #7 all could not be delivered in time. Shame on me for lusting after obscure designers.
 
And Dress #5 was a little too sexy and elegant for a night I just wanted to look silly and over the top.
 
With time running out, patience wearing thin, and every other customer at Bloomingdale’s getting on my last fucking nerve (Ed. note: I’m looking at you, mom and daughter pair who could not get over how FAT, OH MY GOD, we look in EVERYTHING) I ended up buying this Nicole Miller trainwreck confection:

(Ed. note: While this very much looks like the picture I would have taken had I known how difficult it would be to find this fucking dress online once I came into work today, I actually found this picture on the Internet. So I should probably give credit where credit is due. But then I’d have to admit I found this on a site focused on high school prom dress fashion and Kelly Pickler.)
 
It ended up matching the tiara my friend Damien brought for me perfectly. And God bless friends who bring you tiaras on your birthday.

No prom queen on acid. But tragic 80s prom queen, maybe.

 
Even though no fault was mine that not one of the seven dresses ended up working out because, let’s face it, nothing is your fault when it’s your birthday, I do hate that I can’t report back the winning dress since y’all were wonderful sports for humoring my last (shameless) post. So as a peace offering, I will end this post with one of my favorite pictures from the night. Sans cropped out face and all.
 

[Picture redacted due to this blogette coming to her senses.]

OverdrunkBirthday Girl Gripping Trolley Railing To Prevent Death Via Open Windows, 2008

 
For the record though, I was leaning towards Dress #1 or #7.

Where I Ask You To Dress Me While Suggesting With The First Part Of This Title That I’m Naked Until You Do June 4, 2008

Multiple webpages displaying various party frocks decorate my computer monitor right now.
 
Hectic office setting? Sorry, you can be damned.
 
See, in two days, it will be my birthday. And while some people may take this time to reflect on What It Means To Be A Quarter Century Old And Still Not One Step Closer To Owning Their Own Personal Island Or At The Very Least Not Living From One Paycheck To The Next, I am quite adamant about Not Going There right now. Because I’m at work. And the janitor who can comfort my sobs with his broken English chants of No tears, Missus doesn’t get here until later this evening.
 
So instead, I distract myself with a search for the perfect atrocity that will cover my natural birthday suit this Saturday night. Because, well, I survive by living in denial.
 
Which is where you come in.
 
I tend to happily align my taste with the borderline ugly. Two weekends ago, while trying on a pair of heels at Nordstrom’s, I gleefully squealed to my boyfriend, “Aren’t these the most ridiculous things ever?” He agreed that they were and I promptly purchased said shoes.
 
I crave the absurd. Wearing loose v-neck tees and ripped up jeans to the oh-so-hot clubs where all the other chicks are dressed in their “Here’s my boobs and – oh! – my crotch” monotony is fine with me and choosing to don my Alexander McQueen fuck me boots to the scummy dive bar that lets its patrons play beer pong until 4 in the morning is instinctive. Fashion, to me, is a whim. It’s an opportunity to not take yourself too seriously and be silly. Like those shoes up there that I would have bought solely because they’re named EVIL.
 
But knowing all this about myself, a second opinion never hurts. Especially when I have my gay best friend Teddy encouraging me that Yes, the dress that’s electric aqua blue and shaped like an upside down tulip is the BEST IDEA EVER AND OH IT WOULD LOOK SO GOOD WITH A TIARA BECAUSE IT’S YOUR BIRTHDAY, PRINCESS, AND YOU DO WHAT YOU WANT while a little voice somewhere in my head peeps: Prom Queen On Acid. Move along.
 
So, help. Please.
 
Dress #1:

Nope. Not joking about the electric-blue thing and the shaped-like-an-upside-down-tulip thing. But! It’s my party. And I’ll dress like a high school prom queen on acid if I want to?
 
Dress #2:

So this is when you learn that I have a love for all things preppy. And pleated. And white. Because white against my olive toned skin? Helps me convince myself that I’m much tanner than the cloudy gray weather that is Chicago this spring has allowed. Plus. I think I remember how to make faux-carnations out of tissue paper from my first grade art class that would go perfectly with this dress.
 
Dress #3:

Yes. It’s black gingham. Gingham. Maybe only second to seersucker (or wait, no, MADRAS) when it comes to fabrics I’m ashamed to admit I’m deathly obsessed with. Don’t put it past me to braid my hair in pigtails should I wear this dress. That, or some ridiculously voluminous high ponytail tied with a shiny fat ribbon.
 
Dress #4:

I can pair this with the afro wig I bought for our 70’s theme party last year.
 
Dress #5:

So that once my quarter-life-crisis catches up with me, I can take this dress and go try out to be a Deal or No Deal briefcase-carrying girl.
 
Dress #6:

This dress must be too normal. I don’t have a single thing to say about it.
 
Dress #7:

Because I was born in the 80s. And proud of it. (Ed. note: HOLLER NEON.)
 
Celebrations are set to begin with a booze trolley – a surprise planned by my boyfriend because yes, he’s that awesome – decked to the mess with streamers, balloons, and – if I get my way – Pin the Tail on the Donkey. Because trying to play Pin the Tail on the Donkey on a moving vehicle with open windows while completely sloshed demands that hilarity will ensue. Or broken limbs.
 
More likely than not, I’ll demand drinking games with rules centered around taking shots every time a car is seen. Shouting at hoards of people is a given. And all this while capturing everything on the disposable cameras I plan to provide by the handfuls because fuck digital cameras and getting that oh so perfect picture on the third try. Not on this night.
 
So. In sum. I guess I’m asking for your help in choosing a dress that will help me stand out even more on an evening that will surely help me acquire 3 million Chicagoans – plus or minus a few – as my new enemies.

Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead June 2, 2008

You would believe me, wouldn’t you, if I wrote that I’ve been on a three day bender that’s kept me from updating you all on my great, glorious news?
 
Sadly, yes. You would.
 
Katie, a co-worker, says it’s as though we’re no longer the kids who have to fake sick to avoid the evil bully at school.
 
I say we’re like the Jews who have been emancipated by the hand of Moses from the evil Egyptian Pharaoh.
 
My former as in no LONGER boss being that evil Egyptian Pharaoh.
 
The absence of chains scented with her halitosis that have kept me tied to my desk during my lunch hour and late into the night far too many times to list feels pretty fucking unbelievable.
 
And in case I’m still rambling unclear as to why I’m so damn thrilled, then here it is: MY BOSS, THE SINGLE PERSON IN THIS WORLD WHO MANAGES TO MAKE ANN COULTER SEEM NOT THAT BAD, HAS BEEN FIRED.
 
Life is brighter, merrier, and loogie-clearing-every-three-minutes free. Friends – victims of my incessant bitching – tell me they feel a sense of glee themselves, as though they are the ones who have had their own evil bosses canned. And my boyfriend continues to ask if it’s everything I’ve ever dreamt it would be.
 
I hesitate to say yes because I don’t particularly relish the thought that I am this happy at someone else’s misfortune.
 
But then I remember that this is the same someone who once told me to send a very important document to a very important client so that it was received by them three days earlier; the same someone who created such a non-ending series of hellish days for me last month that I found myself breaking down in tears in the office kitchen and being comforted by the janitor because it was 8pm on a Friday and he was the only other person in the office and really, do you know how sorry I felt to bother this poor old man who felt compelled to comfort the crazy crying girl by chanting No tears, missus in his broken English?; the same someone who misanthropely combined the very worst characteristics of Miranda Priestley and Michael Scott into one living and breathing person without the added perks of a closet full of designer wear for me to steal or Jim as my coworker for me to steal (from Pam).
 
A person who made me taste bile whenever I heard her voice.
 
To your question of, “Oh come on, could she have really been that bad?,” I can only defeatedly answer, “Worse.”
 
And while her antics were always appreciated in a “I have so many horrifying stories to tell over drinks, of course drinks, SO MANY DRINKS” kind of way, it was not so good for my grasp on sanity. Which we all know is quite tenuous to begin with.
 
Her dismissal was as Cringe Inducingly Awkward as any episode of The Office could depict. Police escorts were considered at one point. And papers – so many papers – are being uncovered in the office once used by this person. Secret papers. Some dated as old as May 24, 1976 with a faded Post-It note screaming FOLLOW UP ASAP!
 
It is an utter shitshow.
 
And in the gods’ continued quest to make me its plaything, all of this comes at a weird time. When I’m finally trying to maneuver a “career switch”. Which is really just a pleasant-sounding way of saying: Getting A Fucking Grip On What I Want To Do With My Life And, You Know, Doing It.
 
I’ve been handed greater responsibilities. Rumors of a bigger paycheck exist. And countless clients are now mine to answer the uncomfortable question of “Well did she KNOW she was leaving because if she did, WHY did she promise me this by the end of tomorrow? I NEED THIS BY THE END OF TOMORROW BECAUSE I’VE ALREADY BEEN WAITING FIVE MONTHS FOR THIS.”
 
But it also means the return of my ability to feel something besides stomach-tightening dread in those seconds right before walking into my office.
 
The news, on Thursday, was met with gleeful laughter around the office.
 
Today, the laughter has died down. But no can seem to wipe the batshit silly grins from their faces.
 
Myself included. Even if madly hungover.

If You Live In Chicago May 29, 2008

Or a nearby city, county, state, whatever, and you enjoy tequila and champagne.
 
Or whiskey. Or scotch or gin or whatever you consider your poison.
 
Hell, if you think you may enjoy sitting around and laughing at a crazy Asian chick that has a tendency of inadvertently bouncing her tits around when she’s excited because she tends to break out in exuberant dance when she’s this excited – bouncy, exuberant, ready to praise HALLELUJAH TO THE HEAVENS and easy to laugh at as an observer kind of dance.
 
Come be my drinking buddy tonight.
 
I have just received the kind of good news that could compel me to go find and kiss the one-legged homeless guy that chose me – imagine, little old me! – to fixate his eyes while openly jacking off this morning during what I had incorrectly assumed would be just another routine office commute.
 
If only to thank him for convincing the gods that Yes, okay, this time, for this particular episode of her enduring some fucked up shit, we will give her something nice in return.
 
Since the official news will not be released until 2 p.m. Central Standard Time later today, I can’t go into details yet.
 
But, holy fuck, I am giddy.
 
Seriously. Drinks are on me tonight.
 
And yes. We can all understand that to mean body shots.

The Haunting (or How I Learned to Love the Spookiness): A Guest Post! May 23, 2008

By Guest Postin’ Friend
 
For the past couple months, I’ve been haunted. Not by regrets nor by ex-boyfriends, as Carrie Bradshaw would have you believe, but by an actual (meta)physical ghost. A fabulous ghost, but a ghost just the same.
 
I’ll explain.
 
I moved into my apartment last summer after two years in a large apartment building located in a not-so-great neighborhood. Increasing rent and claustrophobia made me search out new digs in a better neighborhood (with trees!), in a new building where I couldn’t hear everyone’s everythings, in a unit that would provide me some sort of window/balcony/yard/exposure to the elements. I found what I was looking for with relatively minimal stress and moved in on a slow July day.
 
I was (and am still) enjoying being closer to work and restaurants and shops and things. The closest thing I’d had in my old neighborhood to shopping was a discount furniture store run by sub-Saharan immigrants who placed strobe lights in the windows and offered financing on unicorn patterned rugs. I had moved on up.
 
Finally I could replace lunch hour runs to Forever 21 with more relaxed trips during my leisure time to smaller boutiques and other stores that didn’t print Bible verses on their bags.* ” Now, when bitchy girls at Streeters give me ‘compliments’ on my earrings,” I thought to myself**, ” I can truly be smug.” My dreams had come true! I decided to run out and purchase a pair of said smug-enabling earrings and found a silver pair that I wore a total of one whole time before I lost one.
 
This may not seem like a big deal on the surface, but I don’t tend to lose things. After all, I’m an only child who was taught to Be Responsible For Your Things. After tearing apart my apartment and still unable to turn up my missing accessory, I decided to chalk it up to fate. “You can’t expect to never lose anything,” I told myself. “Besides, earrings are small and easy to lose. Totally not your fault, plus it’s totally an excuse to buy more. You were totally meant to have a more fabulous pair. Totally.”
 
So I did, and the result was the same. One missing silver earring, more excuses and self assurances that I am responsible. After all, I managed to keep track of about 239042342 pairs of gold earrings, right? I decided to just ignore the doubts and the urges to search for my missing earrings (because, dammit if I learned anything in physics class, it’s that they CAN’T BE NOWHERE) and just go on with my life.
 
Later, when the door leading to my back stairwell was found opened – twice mind you, despite having been secured with a chain lock – I told myself it was some weird air pressure thing. My landlord had been hammering and compressing and power tooling in the stairwell, surely that was the answer. (I know it doesn’t make sense, just go with it).
 
And when my boyfriend said he saw something move out of the corner of his eye while he was leaving the bathroom, I said “Well that’s what you get for buying me a life size cutout of Elvis for Christmas.” (Damsel note: I have seen it, and it is fabulous. Pardon me, he is fabulous.)
 
“No no no, I think you’ve got a ghost, what about that time, with your door?” he said.
 
“PSHHHH don’t you know about air pressure??” I said.
 
I had moved on up! Plus my lease specifically said I was the only one allowed to live there.
 
So on and so forth for the next couple months. Until the other day, when I realized I hadn’t seen my favorite (white gold) necklace for a while. I didn’t think much of it, assuming it would be on the third shelf in my medicine cabinet like always. I decided to look for it, just to assure myself I hadn’t lost it. Only when I went to check the cabinet… it wasn’t there.
 
I became obsessed: maybe it’s in the kitchen maybe it fell into a drawer maybe it’s under the radiator no that’s stupid I just cleaned the floors I should check my medicine cabinet again oh! MAYBE IT’S IN THE COUCH no maybe I didn’t check the bathroom hard enough maybe I’LL JUST TAKE MY ENTIRE BED FRAME APART AND PUT IT BACK TOGETHER it could be anywhere.
 
No luck.
 
I started racking my brain trying to remember where I’d been and where I’d last seen it. I couldn’t believe I’d gone from losing singular earrings to now losing my first actual family heirloom. From a manic state of searching, I entered a low wallowing depression. I sat back on my necklace-free couch and it hit me. Maybe I did have a ghost. Maybe instead of showing up in pictures or my bathroom mirror or on my TV this ghost just liked jewelry and pranks. Maybe this ghost just really liked shiny silver things and/or hide and seek.
 
I decided that I’d take a chance and (Ed. note: Don’t judge me) talk to my ghost. I told him (or her or them?) that he (or she or they?) could keep my two missing earrings as long as I got my necklace back. Exhausted from moving every piece of furniture I own, I decided to give up and call it a night.
 
Here is the part where I do not shit you.
 
Not but three minutes later (time approximate), I opened the medicine cabinet to get some toothpaste and there, on the third shelf, was my necklace.
 
Now, I’m not saying it’s definitely a ghost; there are perfectly reasonable explainations (save my air pressure door opening theorem) for everything. My logical mind says I just shuffled things around in my searching frenzy. I just couldn’t find it until I was calm and really looking.
 
But honestly, there’s something reassuring about having a ghost.*** And when you think about it, it’s like having the best roommate ever, providing our interactions stay in the playful zone and never ever ever veer into the scary zone. Someone to keep me company at home, but no dirty dishes, no unwelcome friends coming over, no one to leave the lights on, and no one to fight over bills with.
 
Because at the end of the day, I’d much rather be the crazy lady who talks to her ghost than, say, the crazy lady with all the cats.
 
__________________________

*I don’t HATE the Bible or anything, I just prefer my discount shopping (and regular shopping for that matter) to be a little more… secular.
**This is the beginning of a lot of talking to myself, which I don’t normally do (at least not outloud). I swear.
***Note to the universe/my ghost friend: please don’t take my publication of this story as any kind of invitation of insult/reason to start scaring the shit out of me.

Eat My (Eight) Shorts May 20, 2008

Once upon a long time ago in January, a lovely bloggette tagged me to do a meme.

And I held out for a solid five months. Because everyone knows you should wait until you’re really, really ready when it comes to your first time. 

But my meme cherry? Is so getting popped today.

When facing the imminent return of a boss who has been out of town since MAY NINTH, one weeps over the loss of a simpler time that allowed the blowing off of a lesser amount of work to blog. In the face of workloads multiplying by, oh, the millions, one finds it much easier to give it up. To memes or cherries or whatever.

(And, um, I wasn’t really waiting. I just kinda forgot. I guess I felt like I had to clarify this so you’d all know to think of me as forgetful rather than a prude even when it’s only an analogy to sex.)
 
Eight Things Meme (Straight to the point, this meme title is. Too bad I won’t be.)
 
Eight things I am passionate about:

1. Fried chicken.

2. Listening to the song “Youz a Ho” by Ludacris at work.

3. Calling anyone named Theodore “Teddy”.

4. Extremely shrunken versions of inanimate things. Like the tiny Tabasco bottles that accompany platters of oysters.

5. Oysters.

6. Music. And all its bastard children – playing it, listening to it, dancing to it, singing it, creating it, jamming in my work chair to it. I suppose this means I am also passionate about bastard children.

7. Semi-nonsensical phrases.

8. Creative endeavors. Like trips to museums or catching plays or attending concerts because hell yes always to live music or hunting for obscure furniture pieces or taking photographs or making homemade tshirts for my friends that read Jam Out With Your Clam Out. Or, you know, trying to assemble an entire suitable work appropriate outfit with only two skirts. (Ed. note: It is possible, but not at all recommended.)

9. Sex.

10. Quality company. Like the company of really kickass people. And not, say, The Hershey Company. Although I probably wouldn’t turn down the company of this Hershey.
  
11. Maintaining a general animosity towards voicemail and diet sodas.

12. Oh. Is it time to move onto the next section already?

Eight things I want to do before I die:

1. Visit every country (yes, every). Keep track on my world map with push pins.

2. Stand Daniel Craig and my boyfriend side by side; compare their likeness in appearance. Maybe also pinch Daniel Craig’s cheeks.

3. Start a band; name it Trashy Unicorn. Or maybe Backseat Blowjobs. (Ed. note: Which reminds me: I’m currently accepting applications for band members since I understand the accepted definition of band requires at least two people.)

4. Own a (female) Puggle. Name it Roger. Or Biscuit.

5. Drive a rainbow-striped convertible. Something Rainbow Brite would find satisfactory to own.

6. Run a marathon. Try not to die.

7. Scuba the Great Barrier Reef. Again: Try not to die.

8. Raise children in England; get them to develop kickass accents. (And, right, try not to die.)
 
Eight things I say often:

Nothing is coming to mind so I will skip this section, thank you very much. Memes are no place to overthink.
  
Eight books I’ve read recently:

1. Harry Potter and the WHY HASN’T DUMBLEDORE COME BACK TO LIFE ALREADY?

2. David Sedaris’ Me Talk Pretty One Day. Again. For, maybe, the fifty-second time since I purchased it in high school.

3. The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Because I worship Milan Kundera. The man makes me want to actively ponder the question of life. And people as fucked up as me do not normally feel encouraged to venture too deeply into such arena of thought.

4. Che by Jon Lee Anderson.

5. Nixon and Kissinger: Partners in Power. Because that’s what people who willingly spend multiple tens of thousands of dollars – or, as my father likes to say, stand on bridge, Daughter, and throw away into water the money, it all the same – to end up with a major in history do. Read books about Nixon and Kissinger. For fun.

6. White Teeth by Zadie Smith. About race and immigrant life in London. You know, to prepare me for when I move there and have my children who will develop British accents while trying not to die.

7. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. I really wanted to love this book but I think I only liked it.

8. Bright Shiny Morning by James Frey. It’s my current read. Not done yet, but all the people who question how much talent the man actually has ever since he’s been outted as a fabricator need to relax, please. And also quit sipping their Oprah Juice.
 
Eight Movies I have seen Eight times:

(I’m going to read “eight times” to mean “a lot”.)

1. The Big Lebowski

2. Mean Girls (I blame TBS’ endless repeats. And my inability to quit cheesy ass tween queen flicks. Also? I miss homegirl Lindsay, Red Headed, who didn’t have to start a leggings line to make money.)

3. Shawshank Redemption

4. Empire Records

5. Home Alone (”Buzz, your girlfriend? WOOF.” May be one of my most favorite movie lines. Ever. That, and “Look what ya did, ya little JERK.”)

6. Arrested Development, Seasons 1-3 on DVD. (Ed. note: TV on DVD? Is a Godsend. Furthermore, in one sitting, this takes far longer than any one movie.  So it counts. Or doesn’t. Who gives a shit. It’s Arrested Development. It wins always.)

7. Fight Club (One of the few movies adapted from a book that I may prefer over the book. I’m disturbed. But Chuck Palahniuk disturbed? Frankly, my overactive imagination doesn’t need the encouragement.) 

8. Magnolia. No, Godfather 1. Or maybe Godfather 2. Hold on. Pulp Fiction? Old School? Wait. Definitely Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Or Traffic. NO. The Saint starring Val Kilmer. NO. BEST IN SHOW. OR WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT? GAH.

 

 
Eight people who should do this meme:

1. The Situation Has Deteriorated

2. The Tranquil Doorman

3. Hollywood Sucker  

4. The Light(er) Side of Growing Up

5. d-blogged

6. Box of Jack

7. JenBun

8. And any and all meme virgins. Because I’m not ashamed to say I was your first time and you shouldn’t be either.

I, Anonymous? May 15, 2008

Lately, I’ve begun questioning if I want this blog to remain anonymous.
 
I’m not a detached person. I never have been.
 
And I’m lazy, too. Keeping up a secret identity is a lot of work. Look at Batman! He’s so burdened.
 
Some people cry that it’s weak sauce to write anonymously. That it’s shifty to not put your name behind what you write. I’ve read anthems dedicated to the destructive arena anonymous blogging creates. That – gasp! – these anonymous writers can write anything they want and avoid accountability. How dare they.
 
There are some people that abuse their anonymity to spread ill-will. Me, though? I’m too busy spreading it of myself.
 
Maybe if there weren’t still a part of me that felt some fear talking about my dad or my past or my self-destructive thoughts, I would just plaster my name on this thing, wag it around to everyone I meet, and call it a day.
 
Most likely though, I’d become too busy worrying about who may find this and how they might feel or what they might think. Namely, my two younger sisters. Or even my parents – albeit they’d first have to understand what a blog is and we’ve only just caught them up with the difference between email and instant chat and I’m still not convinced they completely understand.
 
No doubt it’d cause all kinds of pain and hurt. Denials. And me feeling far more exposed than I’ve ever allowed myself to be with my family.
 
Because for all the shit I share about my dad and my upbringing, I try not to just rant. The importance of family – no matter how warped – has always been drilled into my head by him. That we look out for one another. That we protect each other. So when it comes to the difficult stuff, the anonymity allows me to not worry about Who I’m Supposed To Be or Who People Think I Am and just write. Rarely, if ever, have I allowed myself to be this fully honest in my “real life” about how fucked up I am. Hell, a lot of you would find me positively bubbly were you to meet me.
 
I don’t feel some corrupt liberty to write whatever the hell I want because no one will be able to attach it to me. It’s the opposite, really. I feel pathetically attached to the things I’ve written on here and – as a result – to some of the really kickass people that I’ve met by doing this. When life gets chaotic, it’d be a thrill to just call some of you up and say: Dude. Where are you. Let’s grab a beer/martini/margaritas/burgers/guacamole immediately.
 
But, you know, there’s this whole anonymous thing. How much of me is this blog and how much of me is who I am in real life and will you be able to see how it all fits inside one person?
 
Maybe it’s just another example of my inability to be anything but an extreme.
 
It’s like you find an indescript bag of money at the mall on your way to buy concert tickets (Ed. note: Because if it happened to Zach Morris and the rest of the gang, it could happen to any one of us). You hesitate on what to do. You consider turning it into the police. But, after a few minutes, you can’t stop fantasizing about those tickets for that 7-night Mexican Riviera cruise with stops in Puerta Vallarta, Mazatlan and Cabo San Lucas you just read about the other day and why must Orbitz keep sending you these emails that do nothing but tease you?
 
But wait! You notice that the bag filled with money has a person’s name scrawled on it and, sigh, the i’s are dotted with hearts and there happens to be a picture inside the bag and it’s of an elderly woman and then you notice a second picture and it’s of the elderly woman’s puppy and sure, why the hell not, there’s also a journal where the elderly woman has written about how she has spent her entire life saving money so that one day, she could take her puppy to a puppy convention in Australia where it can meet not only other puppies but dingos and koalas. Now, you not only feel more inclined to return the money to this elderly woman but you have a hard time saying no when she asks if you’d like to tag along to this Australian puppy convention as her way of saying thank you.
 
Because you feel a connection.
 
What I’m trying to say – besides inconspicuously introduce the idea into your head to send me bags of money and/or concert tickets and/or puppies – is that I’m starting to feel like this blog is my elderly woman with a puppy.
 
Or maybe I’m the elderly woman with the puppy and you’re the one who found the bag of money? Or are you the elderly woman and I’m the puppy and this blog is the one who found us?
 
In any case, I feel attached.
 
And the more attached I feel to this and the more I interact with other bloggers, the harder it is to just be “The Damsel.” (Ed. note: Granted, it’s always been a bit difficult, and hence, why references to myself as the damsel have always been done ironically and when you realize that irony doesn’t always come across in print, you worry that you’re reduced to adding or for the rest of your life to get across that you are not entirely serious and, frankly, you’re kind of averse to the overuse of such things.)
 
I feel silly wanting to post pictures but then realizing I need to blur out faces. Or worst, cut the faces out entirely. Silly, mostly, because I am reminded of how technologically unsavvy I am by still relying on MS Paint for my photo-editing means in the year 2008.
 
And a confession? I always imagine anonymous bloggers to be attractive. Perhaps Homer was onto something by never describing Helen of Troy to exact detail (Ed. note: What? You don’t throw around references to Ancient Greek literature from time to time?), allowing the reader to conjure their own perception of absolute beauty. Even those bloggers that actively describe themselves as fat or bald lead me to think, “But maybe a sexy fat and bald. Like an overweight Bruce Willis.” (Ed. note: I enjoy both these blogs very much and I suspect a measure of self-deprecation as it were since Mr. Mulgrew was once listed as People Magazine’s Hottest Bachelors. But now I will stop talking about people I don’t know as though I do. Sheesh. I, Creepshow.)
 
What this has to do with anything, I’m not sure. But rather than setting myself up to be that girl at the bar that gets hit on by the drunk guys already around her, I’m honing in to be the girl that one of those drunk guys calls his friend to tell all about and his friend comes to the bar to see this girl his friend can’t stop raving about and he has to say to his friend after seeing her that he’s having a hard time figuring out how banging she is because her face is a circle with a question mark on it from the chin up.
 
I’m just too forgetful to keep any kind of charade going on for too long. Especially when that charade involves signing out of your actual Gmail account so you can sign into your blog’s Gmail account to communicate with someone that you remember only knows you by your blog identity after you’ve already begun composing the email in your actual Gmail account and oh, this tangle of webs of semi-anonymity I’ve spun!
 
But how does one jump from anonymity to identity? A big “Here I Am” post that lays out my face, my full name, my life history and Social Security number? That makes me throw up in my mouth. 

 
Although everyone is more than welcome to take on my credit history.
 
In truth, one of the more unsettling parts about having an anonymous blog where you write things that are from the heart and well-written and interesting and creative and original (Ed. note: Emphasis, yes, on try) is handling the dichotomy of an implied lack of ownership of all these very revealing pieces of you because you’re, well, anonymous.
 
I’ve said before that I wouldn’t be ashamed to stand by what I write. My boyfriend knows about this blog. Some close friends do too. And knowing how secrets and gossip and the world wide webs can behave, I’m sure there are a bevy of people who know who I really am and read this thing that I don’t even know.
 
But like I’ve also said before: Some of the people I reference – my friends, my family, my boyfriend – never really signed up to be a part of my blog. So for their sake – I try to maintain some privacy. Should I ever want to go public or share my stories as Me and not this Damsel in Digress persona, I guess I’d want to tell these people first. It just seems like the solid thing to do.
 
But if that happens, maybe I’d begin to have a hard time writing whatever the fuck I really wanted to write. Because no matter how often we’ve heard to just be ourselves, we’re all actors to some extent in our “real” lives.
 
Ultimately, I guess that’s why this blog remains anonymous. It may be unattached to a “real” person. But it lacks the bullshit posteuring that so much of our everyday lives can get filled with.
 
So I suppose this means, for the time being, that I will continue to cut off pictures from the neck down, those that display at least a hint of cleavage naturellement, and, if I’m feeling particularly saucy, a tip of my nose to keep you on the tips of your toes.

He Also Gives A Fantastic Graduation Speech May 13, 2008

The kind of graduation speech, in fact, that focuses on America’s shrinking world presence and the prevalence of terrorism and that devil Al-Queda and the torrid hunt for Osama Bin Laden to the gates of hell, people. Managing, really, to miss all the other obvious themes of that hallmark day in a person’s life – optimism, promise, hope. I was positively inspired afterwards to crawl into a bomb shelter and stay there for the rest of my life, hidden and tucked away, after hearing his words of encouragement.
 
John McCain, however, amidst all this fucking fanfare, failed to mention that he is older than Alaska!: http://www.thingsyoungerthanmccain.com/
 
Alas, no matter how effectively an episode of The Hills can make one regress to the mental capabilities of a toddler, it will do nothing to turn back our biological clocks.
 
This guy’s site is fucking hilarious.

A Recap In Your Ass, Part 2: Injustice Is Blind, Too May 12, 2008

Had we been born a family of Greek humorists, my father – he of one seeing eye – may have appreciated the comedy in being called Cyclops from time to time.
 
But, as it were, we were born Koreans. A people who pride themselves on perfectionism, discipline, the use of metal chopsticks, love procured through immediate acceptances into top universities, and a brand of humor that plays like a macabre game of Hot Potato – the main objective being to pass any focus on you and your faults onto a nearby unsuspecting family member as soon as you can, with extra points awarded for verbal bullets directed at nonexistent weight gain or that time you fell off the seesaw you shared with your hefty-and-perhaps-appropriately-named friend, Asia (you know, like the continent) because if you couldn’t tell her you were afraid to sit on a seesaw with her, then it’s only fair you were catapulted off.
 
Everyone being fair game, that is, except for the patriarch himself.
 
I guess in his defense, the story of my father’s lost eyesight is more tragic than humorous: An immigrant in pursuit of the American dream with a wife and two young daughters conducting the mundane task of pruning a small tree in the front yard of his first American business when an errant branch pokes his healthy eye and he is rushed to a hospital where a doctor with malpractice leanings slips and slides with a scalpel too freely and leaves my father almost entirely blind in one eye.

 
It’s the kind of stuff that reeks of injustice and hard yanks at the heartstrings. Of Lifetime Made-For-TV movies dowsed in sepia hues.
 
And, as his children came to learn, the kind of stuff that could add that extra oomph of guilt to already lofty expectations.
 
The story became intertwined with demands to do well in school. To become doctors one day, but - as a twist from that classic Asian demand! – doctors who could fix their father’s eye and restore his sight. A demand that my younger sister followed to Johns Hopkins and I followed to my junior year in high school, when I finally confessed to my parents that I had no desire to apply to Pre-Med programs when it came time to apply to colleges.
 
It led to my parents both not speaking to me for two weeks.
 
A relative period of peace and quiet in my childhood memories.
 
When the speaking resumed, the new future handed to me was to become CEO of big company, maybe Coca Cola or IBM! Or to pursue politics because, surely, the position of Freshman Class President would look fine on any future senator’s resume. But first, law. Yes, law would have to do.
 
And so the story of my father’s eye gained a new spin. While my younger sister pursued a career of medicine to fix the eye that lost a little more of its sight each day, I would become a purveyor of justice and use my father’s eye as my marker for what the kind of injustice I would someday fight in this country looked like.
 
Slightly cloudy, a little withered, and, on its bad days, the provocation of a bad golf game.
 
A part of me could accept this. While the story of my father’s eye served useful in guilting his daughters into hand-picked careers, on a day-to-day basis, my father’s complaints about his injured eye and its implicit frustrations were non-existant. Sometimes, in the car, when he explained with regret how he hadn’t seen that car coming up on his left side that my father nearly crashed into it, I couldn’t help but feel sympathy for him. A pang of sadness in my heart and a re-commitment to offer this man something that could help him justify his pursuit of a Dream that started off littered with small trees and errant branches.
 
A diploma from Harvard Law School, after all, can still be seen with only one good eye.
 
But it’s been two and some years after my graduation from college and I’m no closer to holding a Harvard – or any – law degree in my hands. By my choosing. And, therefore, it makes sense that the gods who have always favored fathers over their children (Ed. note: Abraham and Issac, for one) decided to step in during my visit to my parents in Michigan back in March and remind me that it’s not really living if I’m not feeling an omnipresent panic that I’m disappointing everyone all of the time.
 
So there I am in the car with my sister to meet our parents for dinner. We are discussing her upcoming plans to apply to medical schools and her consideration of MD-PhD programs. I tease her on the fine job she has done making sure our father’s eye and the horrors committed by that errant branch and the villainous doctor so many years ago will finally meet their remedy and a pause far too long and silent passes after my comment.
 
And this is how I come to learn that it was me that caused my father to become blind in one eye.

 
“How is that possible, though?,” I stammered. ”I remember the day that Ahp-ba was rushed to the hospital. I was outside while he was pruning that damn tree but I wasn’t anywhere near him! And I remember that eyepatch he had to wear for weeks afterwards. He looked like some awful Korean caricature of Zorro with that moustache he used to have.”
 
“Yeah, well, one day shortly after that eyepatch was removed,” my sister reluctantly began, “I guess he was holding you up in his arms, and you had some picture that you had painted at school that you wanted him to see and he wasn’t looking at it so you kept waving it around and you cut his eye with it.”
 
“A first-grade picture is why he’s blind in that eye?” My jaw dropped. “But what about the doctor? The bad doctor?” I protested.

 
“I guess there were two doctors.” My sister paused. “The first one, after the tree incident, did a good job. But Ahp-ba had to go to the hospital again after you paper-cut his eyeball since the eye was still recovering. And that’s the doctor that screwed up his eye.”
 
“So if I hadn’t waved around some first grade piece of watercolor or whatever and poked his eyeball with it, he never would have had to see the doctor that destroyed his eye and caused him to become blind ??”
 
When I relayed the story to my friend Pete once I arrived back in Chicago, he seemed unimpressed. “It was still the doctor that fucked up his eye,” he observed.
 
But, see, that’s not how this works.
 
When my father’s car was rear-ended my sophomore year in high school while he was on his way to pick me up from a golf match, it wasn’t the other driver or the rain or the bad road conditions that were at fault. It was my fault.
 
That’s how this game works.
 
While I find it admirable and somewhat surprising that my father never used this juicy piece of guilt-trip trigger against me in the eighteen or so odd years his eye has been injured, I have to say that knowing he chose to keep this information from me only makes knowing it worst.
 
Had he told me, I could haven chosen to play Card Bitter. I’d still feel guilty, but hey, I’d be a victim too. He terrorized me for something I did as a kid!
 
Because that’s also how this game works.
 
But knowing that he told my sister this a couple months ago as they discussed her thoughts on pursuing surgical in the field of ocular diseases and disorders in some spirit of twisted confidence and bonding and I then unintentionally found out due to my sister’s inability to lie because she considers staying silent actively lying – and yes, we are blood relatives – is sugar icing on the cake tiered with mishaps committed by this eldest daughter with all that potential just going to waste!
 
It’s also a reminder that for all ills my father is, he’s a man that’s sacrificed a lot for his family. Who – rather than throw piles of money to fight a doctor’s malpractice that would have taken tedious amounts of time and maybe ended in a settlement nowhere near what he deserved – chose to save for his daughters’ future college funds. And music lessons. And clothing and housing and food and whatever else our family needed.
 
Who never let me have any idea that I led him to see that doctor who left him blind in one eye.
 
It’s a hard yank at my heartstrings.
 
I remember when I once caught my mother struggling to keep one eye shut as she drove us home from church. This was a while ago. She explained that sometimes she tries to grasp what it must be like for my dad to conduct the mundane tasks we can all do without a second thought.
 
I don’t have to go to those lengths, though. Trying to make sense of the tragic comedy (or is it comedic tragedy?) that sums up life with my father – to  justify the surges of rage that can all too quickly be followed by remorseful waves of gratefulness – can feel all too much like I’m using some kind of single-viewed tunnel vision just to get by, turning a blind eye to everything else.
 
But I see the humor. I have to see the humor. So go ahead and just call me Cyclops when it comes to my emotional baggage.