If You Belonged Here

In the Beginning

I remember when I first started blogging.

Yeah. This is going to be a blog post about blogging. Whatever. You're just killing time here anyway, so don't worry about it.

Anyway.

When I first started blogging, I couldn't get enough of it. I had a half-dozen posts started and in the hopper at any given time. I had to pace myself to wait to post instead of cajole myself to write something new. But I have over 250 posts now, and without giving you the day-to-day details of my personal life, which is just not my thing, I'm kind of running out of things I'm burning to talk about.

Sometimes, I think of something new and promptly forget it. Often, I could seriously give you a rundown of what I'm watching on television and all kinds of minutia on where the plot seems to be going, what's implausible, and what made me laugh. I could pass along all kinds of wisdom gleaned from watching Gossip Girl.

I don't think Mr. Poppins could tolerate that for long. And he, unlike many husbands, actually cares to read my blog. Not that we discuss it. We used to discuss the blog, you know, posts, comments, traffic, whatever. Now we talk about other things.

Most of you have heard all my stories. Some of you have heard them all at least twice. A few of you have heard them ad nauseum. And a few of you have been around so long that you figure heavily in the stories, can add to the retelling, or even have your own conflicting version. One or two of you have stories about me that I don't remember myself.

But mostly I don't tell stories about myself here. At least I don't think I do. Mostly I tell my philosophies and observations and expound on things I feel have some kernel of universal truth. That is, when I'm not just amusing myself, which, let's face it, is a lot of the time.

I think I'm so da*n funny.

Lately I've been maybe telling more personal stories. The rat incident springs to mind. But that's kind of against my own personal code where I don't use Secret Lulu for blog fodder. Mostly because someday she'll be responsible for my elder-care and I don't want her putting me in a state run nursing home and swindling my savings. And if she does happen to do that, I don't want any of you saying "I don't blame her."

Someday, that's going to happen to some people and, seriously, I don't blame their kids one bit. After all, they practically earned that money and they deserve some semblance of revenge. But I don't want it happening to me. I'm taking precautions here, people.

I try to think about what I write in terms of whether or not its my story to tell. Not just "is it my story" but can I tell this story without violating someone else's right to privacy, respect, and dignity. Would I want everyone reading this story if it were about me? Would that still be true in ten or twenty years. I'm willing to roll the dice--sometimes--when it comes to my own dignity but I try not to gamble with anyone else's.

That can be a little limiting. Although the Skipper story worked out okay. Still, I had a few worrisome moments when I was afraid that maybe, just maybe, I had crossed the line. I was a little ashamed of myself for that. I even asked Skipper if he wanted me to take the story down. Really, I should have asked him if it was okay to post the story in the first place or, at least, not made it explicit that he is The Dol's brother. My first instinct was correct, though, and he didn't. He found the whole thing highly amusing and got a lot of mileage out of it.

Also, for the record, Skipper used to do a dead-on accurate (although sometimes I gave him tips to improve it, so maybe not completely accurate) impression of me that was funny--at my expense, mind you--until I started dating Mr. Poppins and thought Skipper might do it in front of him. It stopped being funny then. Also for the record, when I asked--okay, threatened death--Skipper stopped doing it. It's been almost ten years and Mr. Poppins still hasn't seen that impression. Although Skipper's impression of Pandora, I'm told, bears a striking resemblance to it, only without all the references to Rhode Island.

The good news is RSS feeds and aggregators mean that if I don't post for a while, you all don't have to get annoyed because you keep looking here and finding me gone. Alice still gets annoyed sometimes. But, hey, go ask her about it.

Heh.

I think it might be nice, now that I don't feel so much need for control, to have a more collaborative blog. One where other people post things, too. The ENFPs, who so seldom post on their own blogs, spring to mind as likely candidates, but they're ENFPs and so, regardless of their blog posts being little more than biannual, they want their own.

Skipper threatened to start a blog about my blog. But, again, ENFP. Never going to happen. Still, I'd let him make fun of me here. After all, I'm an INTJ. I think people who make fun of me are funny.

As long as they're accurate, smart, and insightful, that is.

Makin' Mama Proud

A long time ago, in a land far, far away (aka, high school)  I coined the phrase "rat booty." 

Here's the definition:

rat booty, (n.): been everywhere, done everything, carrying lice.

Or maybe plague.

You get the point. And if you don't, well, you're probably my mother. In which case I would like to take a moment to say:

Hi, Mom, you might want to skip this post because you raised me better than this. Seriously. You did. And I don't want you to have to start questioning your parenting now. Not after all these years. I mean, I'm thirty-four for Hank's sake, and I haven't done any prison time, or even jail, and all my babies gots the same daddy and I've never been on Springer, so, yeah, just skip this post. You'll sleep better.

 Now that we've got that out of the way.

I've made up a lot of sayings in my time, some of which occasionally make their way to prime time television. Now, like the telephone and electricity and other useful inventions, maybe the time was just right and other people lit up with the same ideas as me at the same time and they invented phrases like "I love your guts" or "rocket surgery" (actually, that last one was Mr. Poppins but we're two-who-became-one now so I don't mind taking credit), or things like that. I'd write down more if I could remember them offhand, which I can't, because I had a baby a few years ago and that really wrecked what was previously a beautiful mind.

Take that however you want. Just don't try to make me stop talking to the voices. They are my friends.

Shhh. I'm listening.

And, no, I'm not going to tell you what the voices say. Those are private conversations.

Okay.

Anyway, I used to swear a lot. I got that from my mom. She used to swear a lot, too. She doesn't really anymore. I don't either. At first, I stopped because it shocked Mr. Poppins. Then I forgot how. Seriously. Now sometimes I can remember a single word and repeat it over and over but I have a hard time using cuss words creatively in context. I'm a little sad about that.

I think vices make people interesting. Oh, not the run of the mill, boring ones that lots of people have like alcohol, drugs, and chocolate. No one cares about those. I'm talking about the vices that don't come with a support group. Things like meat poking at the grocery store and popping other people's bubble wrap. Or compulsive rectal temperature taking.

Whatever.

I may have mentioned that I tried alcoholism but I couldn't make it work. Mostly because I just couldn't remember to drink alcohol and even when I did remember I couldn't get past the first drink and I kept forgetting to leave the house and find a bar.

But I loved the idea of it, you know, that when the going got tough and Secret Lulu was on tantrum number fifty-two of the day and I burnt both the pot pies and my finger,  I could yell "I'm outta here," slam the door, jump in the car, gun the engine, and find the nearest bar with an understanding bartender and cable. I imagined staring quietly into my beer while other people took care of my responsibilities, peeking up occasionally to watch a few minutes of Cheers, maybe becoming a regular so that, like Norm, when I walked into the bar everyone would greet me like a long lost cousin.

That was a really appealing fantasy. Only like I said, I couldn't make it work. I'm just not nearly as into alcohol as I am vanilla coke zero. And I'm kind of agoraphobic.

But if that weren't the case, then it might really be cool.

Right now, the vice closest to my heart is staring at the wall. I can just zone out. And it doesn't have to be a horizontal wall either. I'm flexible. I can stare at the ceiling, too. Only sometimes, it stares back and I'm not sure how I feel about that.

Yesterday I noticed something. When I was younger, about two-thirds of the age I am now, The Dol and I would go out dancing. We opened the bars and got home before eleven most nights. We both really love getting a full eight hours. Anyway, the DJ would play all of our favorite songs because, hey, we were the only ones there, and we'd get free drinks. Only The Dol was usually designated driver and so she just got free soda.

I had this litmus test for how far along I was with drinking. If I went to the bathroom and could still hover, I was fine. If I sat down on the public toilet, I was good for maybe one more drink. If I sat down for a spell and had a little rest, I cut myself off. I mean, even when inebriated, I knew that feeling soooo comfortable that I just wanted to have a little nap  while sitting on a barroom toilet was a clear sign of having reached my limit. For the most part, with a couple of regrettably, humiliatingly memorable exceptions, this method of pacing myself worked out great.

I call this method the "bar toilet index" and, in my opinion, it is as accurate as a breathalyzer.

Only, yesterday, I sat down to tinkle (TMI, I know, but it's impossible to tell the story without it) and I found myself having that exact same barroom toilet comfy feeling, which was odd because I hadn't been drinking. Just staring at the wall.

And I wonder, what does that mean, that I can be past my limit on not-a-drop in the middle of the day at my own house? I asked the voices, but they've got nothing.

 

The Urge to Purge

Purging stuff is something that I excel at. Seriously. I am very good.

Mr. Poppins is less so, but he's gotten much better. The first time we went through his cd collection together (and it was a huge one), to get it down to a more reasonable size, he was surprised at my method, although I've since seen it repeated on one of those clean-sweep-type shows.

I set a timer, this way the task doesn't feel like it could possibly stretch into forever, and when it goes off I'm done. But before that timer goes off I get through as much as I can as quickly as possible, no reminiscing. Just "keep," "don't keep," or "maybe." If Mr. Poppins held something in his hand for more than three seconds, I snatched it away and put it in the "maybe" pile. If we got through the pile before the timer was up, we started through the maybe pile again. Inevitably, it was easier to decide to toss some stuff. Other stuff was still ambivalent.

Here's the clincher: we kept that stuff.

You see, for me, another purge can always happen later. It is not important to eradicate every single superfluous thing. Just the things you know that you don't want hanging around. If you reduce the pile by even a few cds, then it's a victory.

When it comes to clothes, I am not a precisely "one in, one out" type of person. Nope. I don't do it. But when I am going through my closet and I turn my nose up at the same shirt yet again, I take it off the hanger and throw it in a bag I keep on the uppermost shelf. I let it sit in that bag for a while. Sometimes months, maybe even a year. Then if I haven't fished that shirt back out because I wanted it, I know it is safe to throw away.

Sometimes I put Mr. Poppins clothes in that bag. If he doesn't ask after an item, I feel free to chuck it. If he does, which he never has, I plan to claim to "look for it" and then put it back in his drawer. If there are too many clothes in Mr. Poppins closet for me to put stuff away with ease, then I ask that he find three shirts, or maybe two pants, that he can part with. Usually he comes up with more but the very idea that he can stop after finding three, that the task will not stretch into eternity, makes it easier for him to begin.

Since I've had Secret Lulu, it seems impossible to get every little thing put away and still have a life. So I keep baskets, upstairs and down. I put those little migrating things into the basket, until the basket will hold no more. Then I set a timer (love that timer) and for ten minutes, sometimes every hour Secret Lulu is at preschool, sometimes only ten minutes a day on the days I think of it, I put stuff from that basket away.
Until the timer goes off.

Then I stop.

I do this with laundry, too. If there is a huge pile--and this does happen--I look at the clock (no timer upstairs) and decide that I will fold my little heart out for five or ten minutes. Then I stop. Do other stuff. Come back and go for five more minutes. Until it's done. If I think I'm not going to be able to get to it all, I put away the stuff I've folded and leave the rest in the basket.

I am not a domestic, and especially not a repetitive, chores lover. I would outsource my bathing and teeth brushing if I could. I really would rather not be bothered. I also can't stand to have things untidy.

It is the bane of my existence.

Mostly, if I know I can get rid of one thing, I do. I don't worry about going through all like things. I just toss the one old magazine, the one unfashionable pair of shoes, the one not-right lipstick. I just get rid of the one thing as I see it and if there becomes an surplus of things (books can be this way for me), I either choose a number to toss, a time limit for grabbing out a bunch but not necessarily all, or I choose a limited space (just one shelf, say) and be thorough about that.

But the secret is, that if there is something that I know is neither useful nor beautiful, but I desperately want to keep it, I let myself keep it. I am not the gestapo. I can be compassionate.

Just don't let word get around. I'd hate for my reputation to be ruined.