Accismus

Last night, I had a date, and we were playing pool, and I was wearing a hoodie, and I have very long hair. At one point, I wanted to put my hair up — I do this by bending over at the waist, flipping all my hair over, and gathering it into a hair tie.

This time, when I did that, I accidentally hair-tied the strings of my hoodie, too, but the strings weren’t long enough to reach to the top of my head with my neck fully straightened, so when I stood up, I basically vertically clotheslined myself.

And it was a new, not-yet-stretched-out hair tie, so I couldn’t easily pull the hoodie strings out. They were really tightly bound in there. So I started just basically clawing my hair out into a giant bird’s nest with my neck craned awkwardly down toward my shoulders, and I also started laughing maniacally, because it was so ridiculous.

The guy just looked confused and embarrassed for me, so I don’t think that’s going to work out, because honestly, it gets so much worse than that on a regular basis.

When I first adopted my rabbit, Thomasina, she had her own set of bowls. I cleaned them sometimes, but they were hers alone, and she always ate and drank out of the same ones.

But then, over time, her bowls got broken or lost, and I started to replace them with some other bowls from the kitchen. And this morning, I suddenly became aware of something that I seem to have been doing now for a long time — when her bowls get a little scuzzy, I just put them in the sink with my own dirty dishes and give her fresh bowls, which means that her bowls are in the regular rotation.

Now, I live a pretty isolated life, and sometimes I lose track of the unwritten code of appropriate everyday living habits for normal people. I started thinking about it this morning, and I realized I wasn’t sure whether it was normal to wash and reuse your pet’s dishes, or whether that was one of the many things that I ought to pretend I never do when other people are around (like using my stomach as a plate, or watching Pretty Little Liars).

I understand that probably no one would ever wash, say, their dog’s dish and put it back in the cabinet for their children to use. But there’s nothing dirty or even very icky about rabbits. They’re vegan. They never go outside or anywhere. Mine eats nothing but organic lettuces and herbs, and hay. Rabbits are a thousand times less disgusting than I am.

Well, except that they are coprophagists. But hey, nobody’s perfect.

So I leave it up to you, readers — is it weird and gross that I do this? Or no big deal? If it’s weird, this whole post was obviously a funny joke, and I’ve never done this.

I used to wait tables at a restaurant at Lincoln Center and we got a lot of celebrities who came in. Alan Alda came in all the time, and I waited on him once or twice. He was totally nice, good tipper. I have nothing against Alan Alda.

But then, a couple of years later, I’d left that job, and I was working for an executive. She was part of a NYC power couple that had a lot of high profile friends. One of their friends was Alan Alda. My job primarily entailed answering the phone, and sometimes when I answered it, it would be Alan Alda.

And I’d really want to say, “Alan Alda! I’m the same waitress you had from two years ago! Now I’m the receptionist!”

But of course, I did not say that. But it gave me this feeling that was at first funny, then unsettling, then deeply disturbing, that I was merely an extra in the movie of Alan Alda’s life.

Honestly, I feel like this a lot – that I’m a supporting player in someone else’s movie. But I usually feel like I’m at least the sassy/bitter BFF who drops by to offer perspective on the heroine’s life when she’s going through a crisis. I at least have a name and lines and everything.

But Alan Alda made me feel like I was merely some background extra, so insignificant that they could cast the same actress in multiple bit parts because no one would even notice. I wouldn’t even belong to SAG. I’d have to bring my own costume.

So now every time I see a picture of Alan Alda, I just get this vaguely gloomy feeling about my life, and my overall insignificance in the world.

But I realize that this isn’t Alan Alda’s fault, and I don’t blame him for it.

Responding to a Daily Prompt again:

Think about something that drives you crazy. Now, think about something that makes you happy. Does it change your perspective on the former?

One thing that drives me crazy is when people chew gum with their mouths open. I can’t stand it, it awakens in me a great and hulk-like rage.

Something that makes me really happy is when people praise me. It doesn’t really matter what they praise me about; I just enjoy being praised.

I don’t think that thinking about getting praised would make me more tolerant of a nearby open-mouthed gum chewer. Even if that gum-chewer was the one praising me. I’d be happy for the praise, but I’d still want to murder them.

Sometimes, I’ll be chewing gum, and I’ll notice that I’ve been chewing it with my mouth open without realizing it. Here’s the thing about gum-chewing: when you’re smacking your own gum around, it sounds pretty cool to you. You feel kind of like a tough-talking, gum-chewing cop on a TV show. But the thing is, you don’t sound that way to anyone else. To them, you just sound like someone who needs to be slapped.

Realizing that I do this myself sometimes doesn’t help me tolerate it in others, either. I don’t annoy myself even when I’m being really annoying. That’s why all people should just live their lives alone in separate rooms, chewing gum, and smelling bad, and talking about their boring dreams out of earshot of each other.

Today I went to the dentist and at one point he cheerily said, “Unfortunately, if you’re ever in a situation where someone has to identify you by your dental records, they’ll have a really hard time, because your teeth are perfect!”

Also, tonight I went on a date to watch a documentary on the burning of Izmir. And as soon as the lights went down, the guy I was with started very quietly crinkling some bag of some snack he’d brought. And this very unkempt guy sitting in front of us immediately said, “Can you please stop that crinkling, please!”

But he had sort of an accent and he was facing away from us, and my date didn’t hear him, and he kept very quietly crinkling his bag.

So this was awkward for me. I felt I should probably warn the guy I was with that this possibly unstable person was about to get very angry, but it wasn’t really my problem, and also I kind of wanted to see what happened.

And what happened was, the angry guy screamed “Oh, for Christ’s sake!” and jumped over the back of his seat into our aisle, and then stormed off down the aisle and up to the front of the theater.

And then the Turks torched the city, or the Greeks did, depending on who you ask.

When I was younger, I couldn’t understand how anyone could be too exhausted to read great literature in the evenings.

Then, I got too tired to read great literature, but I couldn’t understand how anyone could be too exhausted to read slightly less great but terrifically fun literature.

Then, I got too tired for that, but I couldn’t understand how anyone could be too exhausted to watch really great films. I mean, you just have to lie there!

Then, I got too tired for that, and I started watching mostly television. But television is really great these days. Some shows are literature! So that’s ok. 

But tonight, I realized that lately I’m starting to be too tired even to watch certain TV shows. Like, I’ll have some episodes of a really good, well-written, hour-long drama queued up, and all I want to watch is mindless crap. 

Which means I have now reached a point where I am so intellectually lazy that even the better TV shows have become aspirational for me.

I never thought that would be possible. But here we are.

I’ve been feeling pretty guilty about how seldom I blog, especially given that I make my money through encouraging others to blog more. God, I’m such a fucking hypocrite, I hate myself, I’m the worst!

So I’ve decided to hop on the NaBloPoMo train a bit late and try to blog every day in November.

I’ll try to think of something to say, but if I can’t think of anything, I shall turn to the Daily Post’s Daily Prompts for inspiration.

Now, I can’t promise that all these posts will be winners, but they will all contain five or more typed words, which as far as I can tell seems to be what November is all about.

So without further ado, today’s prompt:

What do you love most about yourself? What do you love most about your favorite person? Are the two connected?

There are so very many things that I love about myself that it’s difficult to choose the thing I love the most. Because I love different things the most in different situations: in a mosh pit, I most love my physical assertiveness. In the grocery store, I most love my quick decision-making in the face of endless options and my lack of screaming children. On a first date, I most love my ability to dissolve into a transparent mist and drift blamelessly through the cracks around the windows.

But if I had to choose just one thing that I love about myself, I’d have to say it’s my complete and total absence of fear at the idea of ghosts. I am not remotely afraid of ghosts, and it seems that a lot of people are very frightened of ghosts. Many people complain of being unable to sleep after watching a horror movie, of being afraid in a dark and quiet place, of being frightened of being out in the woods at night.

I don’t have any problems with any of that, because I don’t have any imagination at all, which is a problem when it comes to blogging, but it’s an advantage whenever I need to fall asleep somewhere.

The thing I love most about my favorite person is how much that person recognizes and appreciates how awesome I am, so the two are indeed connected.

Work meet-up observations:

All single people: “Oh, geez, I have to get up at 7:30 every day?!”

All people with young children: “I get to sleep until 7:30 every day!!!!”