Persona Non-Grata

Ever have those weeks?

You roll your ankle walking to the bus. You break your favorite coffee mug. The vibe in your house is wonky and everyone feels on edge. You try a real-honest-to-goodness recipe for bread and it tastes like packing peanuts and weighs as much as a phone book? Damn dogs upstairs won't stop barking? Damn novel won't stop sucking and you're blowing a big-girl deadline? Your hair is flat, your pants are wrinkled, your kid hates the lunch you packed, and the overpriced coffee you bought is burned.
Yeah. It's one of those.

I tried to keep to myself last week like I promised, but the bottom line is that I'm a talker. Ohmigosh, I loves me some words. I'm not sure that I exactly failed my attempt to be a better listener, but let's just say that by Monday, my goal was to not talk negatively instead of not as much.

Whatever. I learned that I can be a real pain in the ass sometimes...and that was a lot of fun, let me tell you.

By the time it came around to figuring out what to do this week to push boundaries, I was sick of those thought-provoking, character-building, annoying lofty ideas that would make me a better person and I wanted something simple. That I could acutally do.

Like crochet.

Ha! Simple like a quadratic equation. (And at least they invented graphing calculators for those.)

I've started and re-started about 50 times. I've watched low-grade videos of old ladies on YouTube as they school me on treble this and double that. After five days of yarn burns and hook injuries, I can say that I make one mean chain stitch.

And that's about it...I've got this really long chain stitch to nowhere going on that I think, after a week like this, can be made into a noose...or at least a rope to hog tie the next asshat who won't move his damn backpack so I can sit down in the mornings.

Just sayin'. You've been warned, asshat.

Oh, and I called a bus driver a dick. True story. Then I wrote a letter to his boss, calling him such. Old school and new school--all in one convenient, pissed off package.

I gave up trying to think of things to do, so I made a long list and stuck them in a jar that once moonlighted as a peaches container. I let it decide what I do from now on. There's a couple in there I'm not so thrilled about trying ("surrender your debit card for a week" pshaw!!) and a couple I can't wait for ("schedule a pedicure ASAP"...ok, that's not really in there, but you know what I'm getting at.)

Oh, and if anyone out there has a recipe for bread that doesn't taste like memory foam, do share. Please, even.

To Boy Wonder: On the Occasion of His First Boneheaded Stunt

The edition where P and I try to convince you that movies are fake and real life can sometimes hurt.

You are an amazing little man, but sometimes the things that come out of your mouth simply astound us. Not that you're doing anything wrong, it's just that they reiterate the fact that you are in fact a boy now. Not a baby. Not a preschooler. A boy.

And boys do stupid things. You are supposed to, it's your rite of passage. We expect it. Someday, P will share with you all the bone-headed things he did.

I just don't think we were expecting you to stick your tongue to the basketball hoop pole so soon. We knew something was up with your soft lisp and the gnarly looking bottom lip you were sporting in the truck yesterday, but I chalked it up to a severe need for some Chapstick. But when P ran into the grocery store, and you told me what you'd done and how embarrased you were, it all made sense. When I asked you "What on Earth would possess you to do that?" you shrugged and told me you'd seen it on "A Christmas Story" and wanted to know if it was true.




(Oh, curse you TBS and your 24-straight hours of Flick-induced peer pressure!)



Listen, little man...we've all stuck our tongue on the proverbial frozen pole. Don't sweat it. Just please, next time you think you might want to test whether something you've seen on TV is true or not...just don't. Save your mama the grey hairs and ignore that impulse.

Love you love you...

me

The Week Where You Just Might Get a Word in Edgewise? (Week 3)

I talk too much.

I really do.

No, I mean it. Silence makes me really self-conscious and I'm constantly trying to fill it with a bad joke or a question I don't really need an answer to. Anything...anything to fill the void of sound between me and the rest of the world.

I think I miss a lot of what's going on because I'm always doing: talking, jumping, expressing, kidding, joking, giggling, provoking...you name it, I'm probably doing it.

The bus thing this week has given me some quiet rides home sans car radio, sans Ipod, sans pointless conversation and it's been nice, to say the least. I'm amazed at what I've been missing all this time with this obnoxious need to fill the air with....well, me.

So this week, I'm on a diet of sorts. (No, I'm already sick of the veggie diet bs I put myself through for nine days.)

I'm talking about cutting back the noise and the static. Let folks say what they have to say. Listen when Boy Wonder prattles on endlessly about Legos instead of reminding him that SpongeBob is on so he better get the heck outta the kitchen before we change it to CNN. Letting someone finish their question before I try to answer it. Allowing a person to air their grievance without offering the most obvious solution that they should have seen earlier...duh.

Seek out a little more silence, offer a better listener in myself, react a little less....and see what the world's been trying to tell me.

Pshaw.

This'll last a whole, what, 15 minutes?

A random dispatch from my walk home

One of our trucks is busted, so I ride the bus to an from Anchorage these days. It's kind of fun and it's own strange, little adventurous little way... I might tell you more about the people I meet and the stories they tell on our bus rides someday.

But getting to the bus includes a mile walk to the bus stop. Today it was snowing pretty heavily and instead of turning left like I did yesterday, I went straight and onto the bike/cross country path that I avoid during the summer ("thars bears in them thar woods!")

It was a small moment, but the walk was beautiful and quiet and bright (despite the overcast/snowy day) and reinforced why next month I'll be celebrating five years in Alaska with no serious thoughts of moving out any time too soon. There was no worrying about bills, about a job I hate, about the job that hates me, about the truck that died, about the need to move soon. Nothing. Just me, snow, and silence for 15 minutes while I walked home (and took a self photo for the record!)

This was the path home. It went on for about a quarter to half mile before it came out in front of our house.

This is me. I look sorta puffy and terrible, but who cares? I was there. It was great.


This was what greeted me when I got home. Boy Wonder was outside playing and when he saw me, he made like a speedy red streak down the driveway and gave me one of the best hugs of the week.

Life is good. Life is good.

What You've Missed During Week 2

Fear not, dear readers...I did not drop the proverbial ball on week 2 of 52! (You were worried, weren't you? I knew it...oh ye of little faith!)

Funny we should mention faith. That's the reason we're here right now. I've spent the last seven days trying mine on for size and stretching it to a new sort of dimension one person at a time.

It started last Wednesday night/Thursday morning. I was flying to Texas to nab me some Boy Wonder and I don't really consider myself a fan of flying. I guess the gliding through the air at 30,000 feet isn't so bad, but the news coverage of crashing and exploding into mountainsides, the a##hole jihadists and their nundy bombs, the turbulence, the half-ounce of cranberry juice they give you before they disappear for the entire flight, the $7 can of pringles your kid polishes off before they do the safety brief....you see where I'm going?

On the ride in, my shuttle driver told me how (thanks to my mom giving him all the gory details of my brain surgery two years ago) he'd added me to his prayer list. He was so grateful to finally see a positive outcome all the time he prays for people he never sees, and he gave me a huge hug. He said it's great to pray for folks all the time, but you usually never get to see them answered because folks drift in and out of your life...

I also have this superstition, and it's between there and here that the idea for week 2 came about. I always have to repeat the Lord's Prayer during the loud, rickety part of the takeoff. I hate that part. Hate, hate, hate it. I look like a deranged cat with my claws dug into the arm rests and my toes curled under in fear. A few years back I realized that the effort to concentrate on remembering the words to the Lord's Prayer distracted me enough to get me through the lift off...almost all the way to the part where the Captains says we can move about the cabin and piss off some beverage cart drivers.

On one leg of the journey, a flight attendant asked a fat man in the row beside me if he would move so a mother could sit by her two small children. We were in a small plane to say the least. I felt like I was on the inside of a garden hose the way we were packed in, so the stress level was high enough. But when the man refused, and then refused to even scoot over to the window seat so the mother could have the aisle next to her kids, my fear of flying coupled with my dislike of rude bastards made me want to climb across the girl next to me and punch the man in the throat.

But a weird voice told me maybe I oughta pray for him. (Please note that this does not happen to me. I could care less, most of the time, what is ailing strangers when they act like selfish pricks. But this was different.)

So, for each day of week 2, I made myself find the least likely candidate for a prayer and send one up in their honor.

Please don't think I've gone all Pollyanna on you, folks. Some of the prayers were really just watered down versions of "Dear God, Please shut that woman up before I lodge her cellphone down her throat. Amen" or "Heavenly Father, that guy is a dick. You should do something about that. In Your name..." (Really, really. Ha!)

I got better at it as the week went by, and found myself sending little tiny "shout outs" for folks based on ailments they probably didn't even had. ("Hey, Jesus. Me again. That woman is limping. Maybe she was attacked by the wolves of Eagle River when she went outside to warm up her car this morning. Please make the wolves find a new place to hang out. But not too far out in the boonies, 'cause those aerial hunters are still out and about. Think maybe you could do something about those punks? Amen." I'm kidddddding, jeez!)

I'm no Mother Teresa, and I'm sure I probably won't be. Like, ever. There's still a few folks out there that should have qualified for this challenge, but who I stubbornly refuse to pray for. Especially the Cracken who makes my 9-5 life sheer hell right now. No prayers for you! You can choke on your fork.

(See? Miles to go, Megan...miles to go.)

But it did open my eyes a little to what other folks are likely carrying around with them. My favorite "victim" this week was the little old lady who sits on her stool at the Wal-Mart entrance late at night. She's sweet as can be, and each time I see her now, I pray that she works there because she wants to...and not because she has to.

I'll update Week 3 tomorrow.

And if you're lucky, I might just say a prayer for you sometime soon. (I'm kidding. If you're reading this and we've met, you can bet your sweet a#@ I've probably already prayed for you. )

The Word for 2010 is...

BRIGHTEN

If you're confused, you should read Ali Edward's blog. I'm pretty sure she's the one who started it and I'm certain that's where I got it from. Others are picking up on the project and selecting theirs, but it took me a while to really marinate on the whole "choose a theme for 2010" notion. To be sure there are plenty of words I'd like to accomplish: discipline, organization, create, yada yada yada...

But I think the point of this word project is to encapsulate a mission statement for your upcoming year and to do it in one, single, power-packed word. And I think I've found mine...one that reflects who I am and who I'm always striving to be.

If you spend anytime around me, you know for the most part, I'm pretty expressive and I like to make things happen. I like to see people laugh, I like to laugh myself. I like to get things going, start things happening. I'm not having a good day if I don't have some plan hatching in my brain. But to what end? What is my purpose in this life, and more specifically, what's my purpose in this coming year?

Brighten. Isn't it just a great word? And so doable, it seems. I need a mission in life and if it's to make it a shinier happier place for my family and yours, well hot damn...light the fires and kick the tires, big daddy.

It's so appropriate when you live in Alaska in the winter and when you and all of your closest friends have babies under a year old (there are five of us and one is due this spring)...life gets pretty damn grim when you haven't slept right in 11 months and you hate going to your job every morning, and you wish you owned a pair of pants that freakin' fit correctly or didn't have an unidentifiable stain on it...or both. Or if you're quitting smoking and you want to punch strangers on the street to steal their half-smoked cigarettes. Or when you've got a brain disease and you're crabby about what you can't do so easily anymore...I'm here to remind you that you're artistic and creative and to keep on creating because it makes you happy and you need more happiness. (Yes, that was specific to my mama, but whatever! You got my point.)

Brighten. I'm here to say life is beautiful, so quit yer bellyachin' for two seconds and hop to it.

Homework is tough and college is a drag, but you're a brilliant man and you've got everyone you know behind you saying "you've got this" and the truth is, you do. It's in the bag already, you straight A-having sonuva-gun. (Aww...hi, babe!)

And no worries. I'll turn some of my obnoxious rays on myself from time to time this year. I've got big dreams and lots of energy. I'll get there. Just watch.

Clutter as Teacher?

This week hasn't been so easy for me. Cleaning is NOT fun. I mean, on any given day cleaning clutter and a root canal can battle for top spot on my "make me want to vomit" list. True story.

I'm learning a valuable lesson here. It's all about the "religion of stuff." How I worship stuff. How stuff symbolizes goals and accomplishments. How stuff acts as medicine, therapist, and confidante. At this exact moment in our house, there is not a real corner without a stack of writing books, or a pile of scrapbook layouts, or 15 pieces from a leggo set, or a sock, or a half-eaten cereal puffy thing. In this house, stuff represents all the things we're striving for, and everything we're just shy of.

I want to publish a book. It's no secret. I have amassed what seems like every single title that involves writing or fiction known to Bookdom. They're everywhere. I buy them when I'm lazy and I'm thinking about writing. I buy them when I'm in the middle of writing and I need an excuse to get up and leave. I bu them when I'm depressed about how I am 31 and I'm still struggling. (Books are just an example here...you can substitute it with pretty much anything I have lying around...scrapbook materials, yarn and knitting needles, fabric and the sewing machine, cookbooks, recipe cards, excercise equipment...you name it, I own it.)

I'm figuring out that to me, owning objects equates to realizing dreams. And it's just not that easy, is it? Sure, I'm terrible at knitting, but don't I get any points for owning 86 balls of yarn?

What's harder is the realization that owning mountains of neat things that I'll never accomplish is getting me nowhere closer to accomplishing. If anything, I come home and I'm stressed. Too much crap. Too much geegaws. I look at that craft shelf and I don't feel motivated, I feel annoyed. ("Who the hell bought all that s&^t, anyway?" My natural reaction is to blame P. Surely he thought it'd be a good idea to grab 15 pads of scrapbooking mat papers, right?)

The other half of that vicious cycle is money. It's no secret that the Applegates ain't exactly the Rockefellers yet. But financial dieting pisses me off. And spending little amounts of money on little piles of doohickeys is a cheap little addicting thrill. I might possible throw up on myself if someone were to tally the amount of money I've spent on my endless good intentions. ("This bi%$h is crazy!!" my piles of thingies is screaming.)

The internal war that unfolds whenever I come near the stacks with a trash bag is heart rendering. (I know, I'm dramatic.) I see my "How I Write" book by Janet Evanovich and I think, "How could I possibly throw that away? I may need that as a reference someday?" Truth be told, I've gleaned all that I can from most of my books and now I hold on to them for no real reason. Same with the yarn. Each unused ball tells the story of what I wanted it to be (a hat for Andrew!) and what it never is going to be (a hat for Andrew!), because, let's face it, an abomination occurred the last time I picked up yarn and round needles.

I've written off this week's challenge by saying I don't have time. I cleaned out the fridge so far, and that's it. (Lame!) Yes, I'm in danger of failing this one miserably, but I AM learning the valuable lesson behind it...more stuff = more fun, right? Ha!

Hi. My name is Megan. And I think I'm addicted to my clutter. :)

Week 1: "C" is for Clutter

Week 0 Recap: I called the bank and some super chipper gal named "Tiffy" (really?) was "so glad" to help me. And by "help me" I mean she told me "totally no worries, this happens all the time." In between the "likes" and "OMG"s, I translated the fact that the bank would re-submit the check payment for my truck automatically. Hooray me. And it did, in fact, go through this week. Check.

The student loan rep was a pain in the ass, let's just be honest. I owe $500 now. I told her, "good luck finding that $500 anywhere in my account." I told her I wanted to work something out so I could get back on track. She "ummmmed" and said not a lot. Finally, she directed me to the company's Web site where I could "fill out a form."

So she was less than stellar in the helpful service. I found the form to reduce payments, but I also wrote an e-mail to the company telling them my troubles with ol' what's-her-face. They told me to call back Jan. 4 and speak to an Account Executive and not a Customer Service Representative. Sorta check?

Oh, whatever.

So it's January 1st. It's quiet here. I'm looking around, grateful for all that I have and then I notice just how much I really have. I have a ton of crap. Everywhere. And we live in the world's smallest shoebox of an apartment. It's ridiculous. If anyone sneezes in here, it's sure to start a crap avalanche and we've got to be careful not to lose Boo under a pile of shoes or winter coats.

My calling is obvious this week: Get some serious clutter out of our house. So, for Week 1, I've got to get rid of one laundry basket's worth of stuff every single day. A whole basket. I can donate it, toss it, burn it, run it over, feed it to a moose, or use it for target practice...but each day, an entire basket has to go.

The hardest areas that need the most of my attention are my bookshelf and the shelves I keep craft supplies. It's stupid how much stuff I'm trying to fit on those.

Today, however, I took a crack at the fridge. Have you ever pulled every single item out of your fridge? You should. It's gross. As for mine, I have two words for you: moldy cheese. And lots of it. (Eww!) In the end, we cleared three grocery bags and one trash bag full of "stuff" that had seemed like such a good idea at the store. It opened my eyes to the point P had made earlier today. We waste a lot of food due to our crowded, nasty fridge. I'm sure we threw out nearly $100 of soggy bell peppers, green lunchmeat, and penicillin-coated Provolone. (Damn. My bad.)

So here's to a less crowded house for 2010. And in the meantime, here's a great link to a blogger who specializes in goals and organization: Creative Organizing. Do it.

Week Zero: Demon-Slaying

Week Zero? Yes.

This, because we've not officially hit 2010 yet, is a warm-up challenge. A little something I like to call The "Face A Few Demons" Challenge.

(And if you're wondering what the hell I am talking about with all these quests and goals, read this post: The Beginnings of Challenge 52. It 'splains a lot.)

Notice I said "a few demons" and not "all of them." I'm afraid if I attempted to face down all the worries and nagging missteps I've taken recently, it would seem as though the gates of hell had burst at the seams (meaning, demons running amuck everywhere, hanging from lightposts and mooning the citizenry of Anchorage. Not pretty.)

But I need to start and a rolling start is better than starting cold on January 1, 2010 with Week 1. (Yeah, all those things I just said AND I've got some major nagging business I have to take care of in the financial sector and I just don't want to.)

This week's challenge, (due Thursday 12/31) is to tackle the following two f$&k ups I managed to find myself in:

1. I bounced a payment for my truck. (God, that felt good getting out in the open.) If you're my friend on Facebook, I mentioned a slight "accounting error" last week? Yeah. One of the final two payments I have left on ol Danny Boy Dakota and I manage to royally screw it up like the idiot asshat I am. I'm ashamed. So, the bank will be hearing from me. And I hope they don't yell. I hate being yelled at..

2. I've hidden from an overdue student loan for about six months. It's getting sirrrrious now, isn't it? Yes. I am going to call them up and get myself on the "not so naughty anymore" list if I can. If not, I'll offer my first-born grandchild (sorry, boys) in hopes that they'll stop writing me mean letters about what a loser I am.

When it comes to my financial health, I am your classic ostrich. This week, I'll work on removing my head from the proverbial sand (and my butt, maybe?)...baby steps, baby steps...

Preparing for 2010: The beginnings of Challenge 52

I love my blog. I mean, really, really love writing in this easy-going, relaxed way. WIth no editors, no real audience (in my head, nobody really reads these things). But to keep a good blog alive, it needs content and love and attention. Did I mention content?

See, that' the driving force behind blogs. People read them because it's a running account...a constantly updated glimpse into whatever world you're showing.

When I can update a few times a week on blogs (yes, I have two, one is hidden under a pseudonym for the world famous writer I am in my own head) I feel invincible. When I can come up with something worth writing, that people might read, I feel like a real, grown up writerly, creative person. But it doesn't always last long. Soon, the days start piling up since my last post and I start dealing with the guilt of ignoring my poor little blog and how undisciplined a human being I am. Yada, yada, yada, right?

I'm babbling now, so it's here that I'll get to the point. Updates are hard to comeby. And you know what else is tough? New Year's Resolutions. I'm trying to merge the tough-to-invent-frequent-updates factor with the I-need-to-implement-some-changes-around-here vibe of resolutions. There. That's what it's all about. (And here you thought it was the Hokey Pokey all this time...)

Don't get me wrong, I have no problem writing down 539 ways I could improve myself this year. It's the following through that's the pain in the ass, and therein lies the problem. What's the damn point?

I know I need to lose 25 pounds. Hello??? I was the one threatening my jeans with the scissors this morning.

Save money? Duh. Like every fourth week of the month I'm cursing at myself and my frivolous ways.

Help people. Yes. Good one. Go ahead and pencil some time in at a soup kitchen sometime in the next 12 months to make me feel better about the fact that I'm a selfish human being. I get it!

So the idea came to me one night when I couldn't fall asleep. (It happens.) What about 7 days? I can do 7 days...I can do 3 or 4 days stupendously, but hell, even Megan can eek out 7 days.

So instead of 539 year-long resolutions that I'll lose and never look at, what about a new challenge each week? I've got TONS and TONS of things that I want to try or theories about eating nothing but grapefruit for a week that I'd love to test. And only committing 7 days to each cause?? Hell to the yes, says me!

Some days I feel like I'm seriously lacking adventure in my life. Others, no organization. Some days I crave spirituality. Other days I crave a damn fine piece of home-baked bread. (No, I've never baked bread. Duh.) It seems that these weekly challenges are going to encourage me to be creative and to put myself out there on the more "challenging" weeks. And yes, I'm definitely going to need suggestions after about three weeks....52 weeks seems like forever.

I'd like to throw out there that some of these aren't meant for 7 whole days, but are challenges to be completed within the alloted 7 days. (I mean, I really want to learn how to roast a whole chicken, but I don't want to eat chicken for 21 meals in a row. Just sayin'...)

Some weekly challenges I've already thrown about: a week without swearing (holy sh$&!), perfecting a lattice-topped cherry pie, a week with no meat, going to bed every night at 9:30 for a week, conversely, making my self stay up until midnight for a week, waking up at 5 a.m. for a week, making it to a yoga class every day for a week, not spending a single cent for an entire 7 days (HOT DAMN!), calling a different friend each day for a week just to listen to them, etc..etc...

You see where I'm going? Infinite possibilities. 52 weeks. 52 new accomplishments (or failures...depending on whether I'm supposed to bake that week or not...)

Hi. My name is Megan. And I'm freakin' excited about 2010...