Things I've Forgotten

My brain is a funny thing, a scary, funny thing. Sometimes thoughts fly through it so fast that even I have no idea what I'm thinking. I catch the tail end of a thought only to wonder moments later when my brain has slowed, "why would a fuzzy elephant dance the cha cha slide in 7 inch heels made to look like Frank Sinatra's spats from Guys and Dolls?"

I don't know.

I'm not sure where this entry is going.

I'm rarely sure of anything. So lets just get started.

I forget things a lot, to the point where I almost feel the need to talk a doctor about it. Everyone has those days where they get home from work and don't remember 90% of their drive home. But whole chunks of memory tend to fall right out of my head.

I can't remember what I ate for dinner last night, the events of my day tend to get jumbled in my head and I can't remember the correct order for most of the things I've done or said. If someone asks how my day was I'll smile, say just fine and go on. Please don't ask for specifics though, I don't remember them.

I'm terrible with names, I'm terrible with faces, I'm terrible with voices. In fact, the more I like someone, the harder it is for me to picture their face. It took a good two months of actively concentrating on CG's face for me to commit it to any kind of memory and even now, the only reason I know that his eyes are brown is because I've forced myself to pay attention to them a couple of weeks ago.

I just don't see things. I may stare at something for hours and have no idea what I'm looking at.

There are a few things lately that have brought this into harsh reality. I was going through my jewelry tub (yes, a jewelry tub and yes pretty much everything is tangled and tarnished) and found my Han Solo illegally modified blaster pistol necklace and a tiny silver owl pendant necklace. How could I have forgotten about either of these finds!? I mean, the first is a fucking Star Wars necklace and the second, how could I forget that tiny adorable owl? I absolutely love owls. They're my favorite animals, in fact, I used to collect the cotton filled toys at any and all wildlife parks I went to.

I had forgotten my favorite animal. How is that possible, especially with all the Harry Potter hype, Hedwig - hello.

The next was even more frustrating and upsetting, although not as unusual as forgetting about your favorite animal. I lost a ring, lots of people lose jewelry, especially rings, it's easy to do. I, however, almost never lose jewelry, it's one of the few things I can manage to keep hold of in my life. My tendancy is to lose the pieces that are the most important to me. My great-grandmother's ring and pendant set with the birthstones of her 5 children disappeard from my car 6 years ago. The ring this weekend was from CG, totally beautiful and wonderfully large and sparkly, I wear it everywhere and don't give a tiny dead baby rat's ass if it doesn't match what I'm wearing. Sometime during the day it completely disappeared. I don't remember taking it off, I don't remember snagging it on anything, I don't remember seeing it or not seeing it for most of the day. Just gone. Very frustrating.

The last was Sunday night as I was trying to sleep. I finally calm my thoughts around 10 at night only to pop back up wide awake at 10:05 anxiously worrying about the little girl that my parents were babysitting over the weekend. I went back over the day and couldn't remember seeing her after church let out that morning. She was no where in my head. I knew that she had to have been with my parents and that she was perfectly fine. But I could not calm down or stop worrying about her until I could remember. I finally broke down and called my mother at 10:30 at night to ask her where the little girl had been after we got home from church. She was asleep on the couch the entire time. As soon as she said it I remembered and was able to sleep.

It's scary and weird. I'm also very sure that it's a sign that I'm going to lose my mind in my early thirties. Something to look forward to I suppose.

So Weird

Sorry, there's no Fi here, or her crazy (apparently incest having) mother Mackenzie Phillips - too soon?!?

Seriously, that whole drama just terrifies and disgusts the crap out of me, poor Mac! So Weird was a completely epic television show though, I miss it.

/random blog-jack

Anyway, on to the original point of my post: Babies and the people who have them. A college friend just had her second. In fact a good portion of my friends and family have been popping them out left and right. I love babies, which probably comes as a shock to anyone who knew me in high school as I hated all children with a vengeance usually reserved for people who club baby seals.

As my cousins and friends start their families I do get that little tug from the center of my stomach, that want/need to make one of these myself. That "I need a baby" fever.

However, once that fog clears I just keep thinking that these people are my age or younger. How are they ready for kids? They're so young with so many other things that they could be experiencing sans all the kiddy crap they're now forced to tote around. I still feel so young, I know as a 17 year old I thought 24 was just about as old as you can get, but now, now I just feel like there's so much that I don't know.

I'm not in a place in my life where I'm even remotely ready for children, how can other women my age be? I see pictures of babies in incubators fresh from mommy's womb and wonder how they can be so ready.

I guess what I'm saying is that I love babies and one day I'd really like to have one of my own, but I don't understand how to be an adult, much less a parent. I still dance around my living room, build forts out of blankets, eat fudge-cicles, make snow angels, and I never make my bed. I think I'm way to childish to have a child of my own and I don't think I'll ever really grow up.

I still see the 12 year old with a tight ponytail, who reads smutty books under the covers late at night and locks herself in her room when she's angry. My mom had me when she was 23, did she still feel like a kid? Do I really have to grow up at some point and will I do it without even realizing it?

Hate

I've been thinking about hate a lot recently. When I was young my sisters and I used to scream our hatred of each other for everyone to hear when we got mad. Just the word hate would send mom careening down the hallway towards us like a bullet. She'd lean down, look into our faces and say, "we don't hate in this house, we don't say that word, you DO NOT hate. You may not like someone, but you never hate."

I don't think any of us girls got it back then. I "hated" everything, my sisters, boys, math, science, that bitch who betrayed me in theatre, red lights, and getting my picture taken.

The hate of a teenager is a massive and fluid thing. That's the type of hate that isn't hate at all. It's testing boundaries, trying to control your hormones and wondering just what the fuck happened to make you such a basket case.

As I get older mom's words make more and more sense. I've never really hated anyone or anything. Not in a lasting way. There's only one time in my life that I think I experienced hate as a real emotion and with a few years and a lot of growing it's disappeared.

Lasting hate, irrational hate, the hate that leads to violence I've never felt nor understood. I'm glad. I can't imagine carrying that around with me.

Mom's a wise woman.

We don't hate in this house.

You may not like someone, but you never hate.

After getting that lecture from Mom my sisters and I would look at each other, stick out our tongues and say, "I really, really dislike you."

We were so sweet.

I just wanted my oil changed . . .

I was getting my oil changed last night after work and was talking to the manager. Every time I come in he has something off-topic and inappropriate to talk to me about.

Last time he talked about famous people he found attractive and wanted to sex up. Then asked me the same question, males and females. Me being me, I of course immediately spouted off about my lust/love for Angelina Jolie and Scarlet Johansson. Then he got graphic and started talking about his fantasies, luckily my phone rang and I was able to end the conversation.

This time he talked to me about how he left work early the day before so that he could go to the nearest bar and drink. How he's pretty sure he's an alcoholic because of it and that he just doesn't care. He continued to enumerate on the virtues of drinking until you pass out in the middle of the day and can't remember anything.

I have no problem with either of these topics when discussed with friends, but the random ass guy that I'm trusting to change the oil in my car? Not so much.

What about me says, feel free to tell me inappropriate and off topic information about your personal life?

It happens all the time. I'm just trying to be polite in the supermarket line, say Good morning, how are you? and then have to listen as some random girl tells me about the boy she had sex with last night and how tired she is today because of it.

I readily admit to being the Queen of TMI, in fact, it's a running joke with most of my friends. However I try to control myself enough to to NOT talk about it with the man trying to repair my cable.

Jealousy

Is a funny thing, especially for me. I've never really been a jealous person, of course there have been times when I've wanted what someone else had, but I wasn't ever jealous of the person for what they had. If I wanted it badly enough I'd find a way to get one of my own.

That's how it's always been.

What brings this up now are the people that Facebook and Myspace recommend to me as "friends," people that I've neither seen nor thought about since I graduated high school 6 years ago (has it really been 6 years, fuck I'm old). I see their shining faces looking out from their little picture windows and am always surprised by how much you can tell from a profile picture and a status update. If people are married, have children, have pets, if they party, stay at home, work, slack, etc.

It's fascinating to flip through their lives with the same carelessness and detached interest that you exhibit reading a magazine in a doctors waiting room. I tend to learn more about myself than them.

I've recently learned that although I don't get jealous or bitter when I see schoolmates with things that I don't have, I do get the occasional snark twinge. I don't know what it is about the high school years that always brings out my bitchfactor, but it's there. Even when I know that the self-satisfied, content feeling that comes with seeing into the lives of others is only temporary and most probably incorrectly placed.

I wish I could give the feeling a better name. It's a mix between smugness and contentment, it crosses the line occasionally into a holier-than-thou attitude and usually straddles the well-wishing line.

Is there a word for that feeling you get when you see someone else with all the good things you thought you wanted and all you can think is: I still wouldn't trade?

Real World Dating - You're Not Really Scottish Carl

Next on the list is Scottish Carl. I met Carl on a dating site: my first mistake. Although I can't say too much about it because I've made that mistake a few times since.

Carl seemed like the perfect guy for me, a total nerd, working on his degree in Special Education. He was a volunteer firefighter, worked full-time to put himself through school and enjoyed a lot of the same hobbies that I did.

Carl wasn't cute, he wasn't really even good-looking, but he was nice and he seemed safe and that was good enough for me. We talked for a long time before we ever met. Our first date was to see the movie Beowulf. It was a decent date, no sparks and occasionally awkward, but you can't have everything right? I decided that it was definitely worth a second date.

He calls me the next day to ask me to dinner. He talks the entire time using a terrible Scottish accent and he gives this reasoning:

"My family is very Scottish, I do a wonderful accent don't I? You can't tell I'm not from Scotland. I can do a lot of accents really well, I'll do a different one each time I call you, okay? One thing you should know about us Scotsmen: we'll never lie. I'm very honest and open. I love you."

After I finally got him off the phone I sat down with my checkbook and wrote him a check for $8.50; the price of my movie admission ticket. I mailed it to him the next day.

I really don't want to owe anyone that delusional anything.

Sad Pandas

It could be boredom, it could be confusion, it could just be that I don't have a therapist at the moment. Whatever the reason I'm here. I doubt I'll make too many posts as I tend to blog like I live my life. I'm very energetic about it for a few days/weeks and then get bored and go watch tv or play Oblivion.

Yes I'm awesome.

I get super emo a few times a month and like to poke fun of myself whenever it happens.