"Testing 1,2,3"

If you refer to my last post, I'm on antibiotics which have made me feel strange and tired--that's why it's been 5 days since my last post. Today I think I slept too much, so I think I'm overtired. Also I'm off pudding, so I may be experiencing withdrawal.

Anyway....
While I was at Walgreen's waiting in line for my prescription, I discovered the most wonderful thing: Chicken Poop Lip Balm. Actually, what's written on the tube is "100% Free Range Chicken Poop Lip Junk." And the next line says "Put put it on your lips." I found this hysterical.

Now, I didn't think that they would actually put chicken poop in it...but just to make sure, I read the ingredients. And it was good stuff: jojoba oil, lavendar and sweet orange essential oil, etc, etc. Reassuringly, the next line on the tube reads "contains no poop"...which just gave me another chuckle. I thought it was a brilliant piece of marketing. Not to mention thoroughly amusing. I had to buy it.

Just in case it was all packaging and no substance, I also bought the Neosporin lip treatment (which I highly recommend in the winter), and I haven't yet had to bust it out. This chicken poop stuff is really good! And it's funny to pull it out of my bag and show it to people. :)

I went to the website tonight--www.ilovechickenpoop.com--and there's a whole line of products coming out! All as cleverly conceptualized as the lip junk. I'm very much looking forward to personal hygiene products with names such as "Kill It Dead Natural Anti-Funk Spray" and "Good Gravey" hair pomade (that one's already out).

Simple pleasures, my friends. Simple pleasures.

------------------
NOTE:

Since the publishing of this blog, I've been in touch with Gretchen at Simone Chickenbone, LLC. I let her know that their product was mentioned on my blog...they're keeping track of outside mentions. She clarified a few things about their products, so I'm posting her email below.
----------
Hello Deny,

Glad you love it! Great Blog! The Good Gravey has been reborn as a removable solid lotion in a silver tin, although some have been known to use it as a hair pomade also. Kill It Dead is also now available. It is awesome. thrillist.com featured it recently. They have a link on our "links" page.

Keep spreading the "PooP"! -->(this is why i love them!)
Gretchen

--
Gretchen
Simone Chickenbone, LLC
Chicken Poop
www.ilovechickenpoop.com
316-263-PooP (7667)

"It's never enough, It's never enough, It's never enough"

So I'm on my fourth course of antibiotics in 3 months. I keep getting meds that don't work...which require me to take more and different meds. It's annoying because it throws my whole body off....

...but it's fascinating because I've developed this taste for pudding. Instant pudding. I've gone through about 6 boxes of Jell-O Instant Pudding in the last two weeks--vanilla, chocolate and chocolate fudge. I can't stop eating it.

This is odd because I'm not someone who craves sweets. I don't really eat candy--I don't love cake or ice cream or pastries. I could do just fine without them. If I ever have an intense craving for anything, it's usually for something salty.

But now, I want nothing but sweet. I eat yogurt with bananas for breakfast, cereal for lunch and a simple dinner followed by pudding.

I tried the sugar-free pudding...just so I wasn't loading up on all that extra sugar. But you know what happened? I ended up eating the whole box in one night. It usually takes me at least two days to finish the contents of one box of pudding (which, for your information, makes 2 cups).

I should have known this. I've read that when you eat something that tastes like sugar, you trick your body into expecting sugar (read: calories). When your body does not get the calories it expects, it starts to give off hunger signals...which just makes you eat more. So the sugar-free pudding satiated my taste for sweet...but then I just started craving more. And so I ate the whole thing....and added bananas to it.

It's crazy! I don't even recognize these new snack habits I have. It's really beyond my control. And it kind of amuses me that it's so out of control...I think it's actually quite funny.

Until Monday night. I went to someone's* house to watch "24". I bring a box of pudding and some milk because I think it would be a nice gesture to share. So I get there and one of the roommate's girlfriend's is baking up a storm! She had an electric mixer going and ingredients spread out all across the counter. She kept having to turn the mixer on to cream the butter...and probably add some eggs...and then maybe some flour. Then she set it all in a pie pan and added peach halves to it before she poured this delicious looking custardy concoction on top.

And there I am like a jackass mixing my chocolate powder and milk in my little bowl with my little whisk. It was horrifying.

*And let's add insult to injury. Did I mention that this certain *someone's* house is a very nice grad student who I think is very attractive and pretty swell? He lives with two people in serious, committed relationships...and they were ALL home! The roommates and their girlfriends. And everyone is cozy and has their thing and they're all used to each other and hang out together and cook for each other--and I still haven't figured out if or how I fit into this whole equation. And so I just stood there red-faced, whisking away, wanting to run home...but being held back by the pudding I just made.

But with every bad experience, comes a little knowledge. And you know what I learned? My pudding addiction is NOT amusing to people who don't know me! It's just weird.

My friends who are reading this are probably cracking up right now at the thought of me emptying box after box of pudding into cup after cup of milk and going to town. But if you don't know me...you probably think I'm insane!

Ugh. I'm still embarrassed.

And I'm on meds for the next 8 days...so I'm going to be "crazy pudding lady" for the next week.

"That's when I knew that I was home"

What's amazing to me is that when you're open and vulnerable, help comes from the most unexpected places. When tragedy/sadness strikes, it's never the person you thought who provides you with the most comfort.

I've found this to be true every time I've had to face something big.

And it's a nice thought.

That's my aside for the day. And a shout-out to someone who knows who she is. :)
-------------
"He is the happiest, be he king or peasant, who finds peace in his home." ~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

I've just spent the week rearranging my entire apartment. Clearing out every single closet, consolidating and decorating, and now I think I'm almost in love. There are still a few things that need to get put up...like curtains in my living room and refinishing and reupholstering the dining room chairs. But I'm pretty happy with it so far. Until a few weeks ago, I kind of actively disliked it...and that's no good. I believe that your home should not be a source of stress but of warmth and comfort--whatever your particular aesthetic may be.

Perhaps this is why I'm drawn to Feng Shui--I think that everyone should have a home that's harmonious and that they love. I need to be able to walk in the door and be comforted that I'm home. I absolutely loved my apartment in New York for that reason. Every time I walked in, I felt a little relief that I had arrived. I could breathe a little easier and let the day go.

I spent a lot of time making sure the colors were right...I painted a mottled, Spanish earthy yellow look in my living room. My bedroom was a soft green and my kitchen had one wall painted an Italian red. Very European and cozy.

I painted this place, too. The walls were gross and cracking, so I had to paint the entire thing. It wanted to be neutral, though...not a lot of involved colors. Soft and earthy.

I haven't been in love with the living room color. I was expecting it to be a little nicer than it turned out...but now that things are placed a little better and better lit, I think I'll stick with it. I love how the bedroom turned out. It's an earthy pink. I wasn't expecting pink...but more of an earthy, clay color. But it looks pink--antique rose to be specific. I never thought I'd like a pink bedroom, but I got a fantastic bed set that makes it look fabulous. :)

The kitchen came in yellow....and since I had painted the rest of the place, I just kept it. Painting gets tiring...

It's amazing the difference in how I feel. I really can't stress that enough. And I really didn't realize how frustrated I was with the old layout until I fixed it. And now that I feel like everything is in order, it makes the rest seem easy.

And that's all I have to say about that.

And since I started with a quote, I'll end with one:
"Home is the one place in all this world where hearts are sure of each other. It is the place of confidence. It is the place
where we tear off that mask of guarded and suspicious coldness which the world forces us to wear in self-defense, and where we pour out the unreserved communications of full and confiding hearts. It is the spot where expressions of tenderness gush out without any sensation of awkwardness and without any dread of ridicule."
~Frederick W. Robertso

"This mind wasn't well, Next time, hope I'm..."

So we did watch the Coliseum go down and it was pretty cool. Loud. And very dusty. And then per my brother's brilliant idea, we went to IKEA (from whose parking lot we watched the whole thing) for their $.99 breakfast.

It was a cool tribute to the building where we saw the Ice-capades when we were little...and then the Spin Doctors and other concerts in high school. I did have an odd moment, though. I realized that five and a half years ago, I stood on the 39th floor of my building in midtown hoping that the twin towers wouldn't fall...and here I was cheering on the demise of another building. Totally different circumstances, I know...there was nothing to reconcile. Still, the thought ran through my head.

I don't want to define life as we know it by that event, but I'm not sure I ever truly processed the whole thing. The fact that I thought about it yesterday, seems to indicate that I have not.

Those were tough days. My mind was blank and I ran on auto pilot for about a week before I broke down. And as much as I try to resist it, that day will define much of my adult life. My kids will learn about it when they're in high school and they'll say, "My mom was there. She watched it happen." And she knew people who were in the buildings and made it out, who were next door and watched it close up, in the weeks after, she held hands with strangers as they walked out of the subway together making sure each got where they needed to go just in case.

Maybe resistance isn't the answer. Maybe acceptance, and letting myself face the horror and the grief and the confusion and anger that I probably still have shelved in some transom of my brain will allow those events to be a more meaningful part of my life. Because right now, it's tough to talk about, and if someone brings it up, I check right out. I have a story that I can tell without becoming upset. So I stick to that. But the details still kill me. Sometimes, someone asks about something that I don't have scripted and I lose it.

And it's like "Enough already. It's over, move on, it happened, we're working on it." But I'm not sure I've actually fully faced the impact it had on me. I've never really thought that I had a right to claim it as a personal tragedy. I lost no one. Those folks who I knew in the buildings made it out. There was one person who was lost whom I knew in passing--so I knew her name and could recognize on the street...but we weren't close. I attended no funerals.

So who am I to claim grief?

Still, I look to the empty skyline downtown imagining the skyline the way it used to be. And I'm haunted by the memories of the firemen covered in dust on the subway, their spirits broken. And I'm still moved by the delicate way in which people handled them...with offers of encouragement, a pat on the shoulder, paying their dinner bills, telling them "thank you".

Sheesh. I wanted to write about the Coliseum going down and how cool it was! I certainly didn't want to write a post about "I was there". I can't stand when people do that. It makes me feel like people are exploiting the event for their own purposes. Especially since it's been a justification for so much....I feel like 9/11 is thrown around as an excuse and not given the reverence and the respect it deserves.

But at the same time, I was there. I didn't lose anyone...but I still can't talk about it. And 5 years later, maybe that's not the best idea. Maybe waiting for people to stop talking about it won't work. Maybe staying open to the flood of emotions will. And maybe letting myself go there will bring me to a new place about it...where I can have a discussion and share my experiences instead of shutting down.

And then the next time a building goes down, I can enjoy the demolition and write an amusing post about it instead of writing a big downer post.

I'll make it up to you, I promise.

"I think it's getting to the point where I can be myself again..."

So after my last post, I thought "maybe I should stop taking freelancing gigs and just let that last connection to NY go" (remember that I was trying that whole "filling a void, by creating more void." So how interesting is it that the next day, the universe throws me a bone. A little bone, but a bone. I wouldn't call it structure, but at least something new towards which I can direct some of my energy.

I got a gig as a back-up singer for a band. I was driving into Hamden to meet them...and as I turned onto this tiny backroad, I started to get scared that they were psychos that used ads for back-up singers as a way to lure poor, unsuspecting souls to their lair and do all sorts of unspeakable things to them. Then I pulled into the driveway of this happily lit house with kids' toys in the garage and a manicured front lawn, and decided it might be ok to go inside.

And really they're just nice people who want to play their instruments and sing their songs. They're from all walks of life. One of them is a ghost chaser....literally. She goes to cemeteries and other haunted places and takes pictures for analysis. Honestly, I think that's awesome. Especially since I swear I had a ghost in a hotel room I once had in Chicago...and also my friend Mike lives with one. Seriously. I won't get into it now, but there's a ton of evidence that he can't explain...and he's a scientist.

Now, I'd be too freaked out to run around cemeteries snapping random photos of nothing, but to meet someone who does it so unapologetically is actually pretty refreshing. It's just her thing. And hey, she could do worse.

Anyway, they haven't really had any gigs yet, but at this point, I'm not sure I mind singing in garages with some nice, talented people. Hopefully once there's a solid repertoire, we can take the show on the road. And if not, no harm done. I don't need people to listen to me sing, I just need a place to do it.

The best part about it right now...is that I get to be part of a "we". The second I got there, they gave me a mic. So three minutes after I walked in, I was singing. And after a few songs, they asked me what kind of music I like to sing...and told me I should feel free to bring them music because they'd learn whatever I wanted. To this I said "Does that mean you're keeping me?" "Definitely. You're our favorite."

It was fun, and they're really easy-going and nice. They're just happy to do music. Which is exactly what I need right now. No pressure, just musical expression.

Off to bed...my brother and I are waking up at 6:30 to watch the demolition of the New Haven Coliseum tomorrow. It's going to be nuts.

"It's time to let it go..."

I want to be as happy as the girl at Cafe Atlantique in Milford. She's so happy making crepes and serving coffee. She talks to her customers and they all know her by name (Amanda). And her regulars say things like "Wow, that panini was especially great today, Amanda." It's really too sweet. She makes you want to work in a cafe because she makes it seem so fun.

Not that I'm not happy...but what I think she has that I don't is a feeling of having truly found her niche. And I think I'm still in a process of searching. Only thing is, that my whole life I've always been about fitting in everywhere...not just one place. I've always felt like I had friends and interests everywhere.

And suddenly, I find myself with no full time work, half a certification, no sports team, no singing group...and nothing on the horizon. So what do you do when your world has lost its structure?

I know you keep putting one foot in front of the other, and you create your own structures and all that jazz. I took up freelancing for my old company so that I could have something familiar to do, and it allowed me keep in touch with my old life. Plus, they pay me well for pretty straightforward work...but that's not really why I did it. I needed something I knew...and I also needed something to tell people when they asked "so what do you do?" But I wonder if keeping that link is akin to holding onto the ledge on the side of the cliff.

In order for that last line to make sense, I should explain:
I read a parable once about a mountain climber who loses her footing and slides down the rock towards the edge of a cliff. Just before she's about to go over, she grabs a hold of the ledge and hangs there in mid-air. Desperately, she cries out "Lord, help me. Please come to my rescue!" And the Lord answers "Yes, Sadie, I can help you, but first there's one thing you must do."

"I'll do anything!" she cries, "What must I do?"

"Sadie, you have to let go of that ledge."
_______________

That last line still gives me the jibblies.

I can grasp the concept of letting go and surrendering to the chaos and the not knowing. But how do you know that you're holding onto something that no longer serves you? I'm not sure that you always do.

And besides, can you create structure by creating more non-structure? Can you fill a void by creating more void? It seems so counterintuitive....but maybe that's a concept I need to let go of ...if that's the game we're playing.

Or...maybe I should just keep ordering banana and chocolate crepes from happy Amanda until something strikes me. :)

"You & I have been through this before..."

My last post was mostly my musing over my move (wow, so many "m" words...). I imagine most posts will be this way since I sometimes let the point get away from me.

I should clarify. It sounded like I've spent months sitting around being bitter about an ex-career in advertising. Not true. Since I moved, I've been freelancing in advertising and working from home. This suits me just fine because I don't have to take part in all the drama and client-service b.s. that happens when you're actually in the building. And I must say, working from home pretty much kicks ass.

There are some negatives, though. Like the fact that it's project to project, and when the projects run out, I need to find someone else to employ me. But it's actually not that bad...certainly preferable to what I had before. And it's buying me time to finish up my Feng Shui school work. I took a Professional Feng Shui certification class last summer, took the test and now that I've passed, I need to finish up three big, huge reports (that last bit is just me whining...it's not that bad).

I've had some technical difficulties, though. There are no good programs for Macs, so I had to dig out my old PC laptop. And now I can't the internet to work on that. Blah, blah, blah...it'll all get done. But in the midst of finding more projects to work on, this tends to get put on the back burner. As it must for now.

Anyway...for some reason, I felt the need to clarify. I'm pretty happy with where things are going for me, just being in the middle spot is vague and strange. But transitions need to happen at their own pace. It's all been an exercise in patience.



Hmmm...That's a whole hunk of story that I've given in two posts...and quite frankly, it doesn't define me at all. It merely explains how I came to be living in New Haven from New York.

So to wrap things up, here's all anyone needs to know about me:
1) I'm easily amused... I like to laugh, so this works out for me.

2) I have three cats. And, no I'm not a crazy cat lady. My apartment doesn't smell like a litter box, and I don't treat them like they're my kids. They're cats. I just ended up with three. And they're a riot to live with.

3) I'm pretty friendly and easy going. Just don't make fun of my cats or I'll kill you.

4) I make distinctions for everything. I love music, and I categorize every bit of it.

5) I have an inner circle of friends and family for whom I would do anything. It's not easy to get into this circle. I have circles outside of that. And those don't have the big boundary. They still get all of me and my friendship...just not the offers for midnight runs downtown because you found a bug in your bathroom and it's terrifying you, or an answer for the 5am wake up calls because you can't sleep. Those kinds of things are only reserved for a special few. (Repeat: I make distinctions for everything)

6) I believed in Santa Claus for waaaay too long.

7) I love sunflowers.

8) I quote movies like it's a reflex. Sometimes people don't have any idea what I'm talking about or where it came from. This is usually fine and good...until I quote something from Borat like his "Throw the Jews down the well" song. And then I'm in trouble.

9) I love bacon.


That's pretty much all you need to know about me. Like I said, the rest is just story.

p.s. The titles are all quotes from Barenaked Ladies songs....wouldn't want to plagiarize.

"Where does the time go when it's not around here?"

So apparently I feel like I have things to say...but I'll start with me.

I just moved back to New Haven, CT from New York City. I was there for 6 years--from July 2000-September 2006. While I'm happy with the move, it has been somewhat of an adjustment. Not entirely because of the move...I also left a career in advertising and some really good friends (some really bad ones, too).

So I guess I'm in somewhat of a "time out". Liminal, if you will. Betwixt and between.

(For those of you who weren't Anthro majors, here's a good working definition of "liminal" from Wikipedia:
"The liminal state is characterized by ambiguity, openness, and indeterminacy. One's sense of identity dissolves to some extent, bringing about disorientation. "...Sounds about right. )

I do think breaks are a good thing. They give you distance and perspective. And then you get to bring it all back (if
you choose to go back) to your circumstances or use it to create new ones.

Not that there was anything wrong with my old life, per se. It just got tiring. I didn't take advertising seriously at all. It's
what made me good at it (because I rarely lost my cool) and it's what made me wrong for it (because I just didn't care). I would get annoyed in meetings listening to people talk in circles making sure they had "made a contribution" and "added value." Listening to clients jabber on about how they could "push the envelope" and use some "non-traditional" tactics. My boss would fight passionately for campaigns. I didn't bother because if the clients didn't agree...so what? They were going to get their way in the end anyway.

I really did try to make it "what i wanted to do when i grow up", but it just didn't work. And I wonder what the difference was between me and those who did want it. What was it that had them be so passionate about something I considered so inconsequential? I think really highly of some of my old colleagues (especially my ex-boss), so it's not that I blame it on some personality defect or intellectual deficiency on their parts, or mine for that matter.

And maybe it is just what it is. Like my Miss Piggy bathing suit when I was a kid. It was black and white and pink. And I loved it. I wanted to wear it all the time. One summer, I was getting ready to take my first swim of the season and I went to get it. I pulled it over my legs and it got stuck. For the next 5 minutes, I struggled trying to pull the straps over my shoulders. Anything to get the darn thing on. But it just didn't fit. Fast forward 20 years, and that's exactly what I was doing with my job. Not to imply that I was somehow "too big" for it. It just didn't fit and forcing it didn't help.

My moment of reckoning came during the summer of 2005. There were 60 people dead in London due to the subway bombings, and we were arguing with clients about conducting research for a print campaign. And no one stopped to pause. No one stopped to talk. Everyone just wanted to push on with their work.

I realized that one day I may have a child who has a softball game or a play...and my clients could ultimately get to decide whether or not I went. And I just couldn't handle that my life was going to be prioritized like that.

If I think about it, I guess I'm not that surprised. I always knew it was temporary at best, but I always thought that I'd have a really cool plan in place when I did decide to go. I never thought I'd need to move back to CT to recover (that might be
overstating it a bit, but that's what it feels like sometimes).

But I guess if nothing else, I learned that I need to believe in something and be proud of it...even just a little bit...if I'm going
to spend so much of my time and energy on it. Seems logical...but it's so easy to get caught up in something that's not good for you just to say that you've got something interesting going on.

I'll always love New York. It's really an amazing place to live. But it's also a little warped--the measures of success seem so frivolous to the rest of the world, but they are a really huge deal in New York. For example, "Wow, you live by yourself?" (This is an impressive feat....it's usually the first thing people want to know after "Where do you live?") Even better is..."I have a one bedroom." That means you have arrived...a studio in a doorman building is actually less impressive than having four walls and a door that separate your bed from your couch.

Life gets both bigger and smaller in New York. You live big. It's a bigger stage; there are a ton of all different kinds of people, the buildings look like they're going to topple over, there are so many museums, theaters, neighborhoods and experiences so close by. But because it gets big, it gets small. You have everything you need within a 10 block radius, so why leave the neighborhood? The immediate things become smaller...smaller spaces, smaller priorities, smaller measures of success (bedrooms and doormen). There is no in-between. And you're always compromising something. And for many, it works.

In New York you get to be a precious, insignificant part of something huge. And there's something really great about that.