trashed

In less than two days, Karawynn will be arriving for her holiday visit to the balmy South, and I am behind on cleaning. Not because I’ve been particularly diligent; I really haven’t been. Not because I can’t break larger tasks into smaller tasks; I’ve done that already — I even have a list. I can’t actually *do* the smaller tasks once they’ve been listed. Some of them have gotten done as incidentals. The bookshelf in the study gleams now, its proud inhabitants tucked neatly into size-coordinated rows. I dusted and reorganized the bookshelf while I was on the phone with Karawynn one night and actually had some motivation. Motivation. I can’t remember what it was like to be consistently motivated to get anything...

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Posted on 17 Dec 1998 | Comments Off

intimacy and a modern invention

BellSouth should try harder to sell me things. I would buy caller ID in a heartbeat. The only reason I haven’t so far is that Chad doesn’t believe in any phone toys that exist outside his computer. That answering machine has never worked, but telling him this only serves to encourage him working on it (read: downloading hundreds of sound-card patches, swearing profusely) and it doesn’t get fixed. So, that’s that. Why caller ID? Because I am notoriously bad with phones. I don’t like talking on the phone to 99% of the people who call me. Unfortunately for me and for the people who call me or expect me to call them, I have only recently pinpointed *why* I am so bad with phones. A normal day at home before work is like...

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Posted on 8 Dec 1998 | Comments Off

honesty with friends

At the time this topic was “assigned,” I had a dilemma. The way I saw it, I could either be honest with one of my closest friends, or I could go on hating who I was around her, and feeling awful about our friendship in general. You see, I had lost the ability to be honest with her. Due to some major problems she’s been having in her own life, I’ve been supportive and caring of her to a fault; meanwhile, my own needs in the friendship have been largely overlooked. And I’m not being honest with her about it. One could say, “Well, if you can’t be honest with your friends, who can you be honest with?” (Now that I look at that, it seems like a blanket statement: “Well, if you can’t ____ your friends, who...

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Posted on 10 Sep 1998 | Comments Off

feminism

I’m going to reveal my Definite Uncoolness with this entry, I can already tell. I don’t like what the word feminism has come to mean. I don’t consider myself a feminist, by what the word means in everyday usage. I’m more of a humanist. First off, I don’t believe in defeminizing (is that a word?) women in order for women and men to be equal in society. Androgyny, while an interesting concept, is not an ideal I strive towards. I don’t strive towards femininity, either; there should be a balance, rather than a neutralizing, of genders in each human being. I perceive the defeminization of women to be sexism of a sort. Women should be able to be as feminine or as masculine as they want to be, and still be considered female. My...

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Posted on 14 Jul 1998 | Comments Off

libraries

The Library Smell: what an incredible invention. There is something so innately comforting to me about the smell of an established library. New libraries smell funny, smell wrong yet. A library that’s been around, oh, let’s say ten years … now that’s a smell. Of course my attraction to libraries is more than just an affection for a good, musty book-scent. It’s the calmness of a library, the lack of sudden movements (even moreso in the South, living up to that stereotype), the peace. I’ve loved libraries ever since my parents used to take me to the little Cambridge Springs library on the corner of the street we lived on. Libraries meant books, and I’ve never been able to get enough of those. Since I started working in...

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Posted on 13 Jul 1998 | Comments Off

slumber parties

I wish I could say that slumber parties taught me about life, or friendship, or sex, or even ouija boards. When it comes right down to it, I never liked slumber parties. During the course of the evening, something would always happen that would mark me as a party-pooper or as an uglier-than-(insert cutest girl in fifth grade here). The era of slambooks, those hideous little notebooks with “anonymous” entries about who you most despised or who was the most annoying person in the school, brought about more humiliation than I could stand. It was apparent I would always be “Nicest Girl.” But I didn’t want to be nice. I wanted to be pretty, or funny, or scary, even. Anything but nice . Nice was the curse of boring people who always...

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Posted on 17 Jun 1998 | Comments Off

procrastination

Odd that I should procrastinate while writing about procrastination. I suspect this was tied up with feelings of inadequacy after the trend of lame entries I’ve been writing, but still … I waited until the last possible moment to write this one. For shame. I procrastinate to the point of utter, all-encompassing guilt, and then because I feel so guilty, I don’t want to think about it any more so I don’t just do the thing, I procrastinate further. Then it becomes this monumental task that can Never Be Completed because I’ve put it off so long. Why? With writing, it is different. I don’t intentionally, consciously procrastinate writing. When I have something to write, I do it. Except for this journal entry, of course. I...

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Posted on 9 Jun 1998 | Comments Off

maternal instinct

An acquaintance of mine, a med student, asks me, “Do you have any kids?” I laugh and say, no, no, not me, ha ha ha, very funny there, move along. Then he points to my wedding ring. “Well, that kind of goes to say you’ll be having them at some point, right?” I become self-righteous — or not self-righteous, but somebody-else-righteous — “No,” I explain carefully, “I didn’t get married to have children.” But I want them. This terrifies me on a regular basis. Probably about three years ago I started noticing babies in that MUST HAVE BABY sense I had always heard about, always feared of. The all-powerful Biological Clock had started ticking for me. Only mine doesn’t seem to tick down;...

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Posted on 8 Jun 1998 | Comments Off

competition

“Why do you and Chad need separate computers?” my friend asked me the other day. “We wouldn’t be together without them,” I glibly replied. “But why?” Why indeed. The first thing that came to mind was competition. We are very, very competitive sometimes. This is also my answer to other questions, such as: “Why don’t you two play cards against each other?” and the like. We get along quite well, but there has always been an element of competition in our relationship, and frankly, I like it. I compete with other people in my own mind, as well. I seem to be constantly striving towards “most interesting person so-and-so knows,” now that I don’t care to be the best dressed or the cutest....

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Posted on 7 Jun 1998 | Comments Off

imaginary friends

“I can imagine how alluring an on-line relationship can be because of the safe little shield. But a rl relationship has to be so much more satisfying, in every way. On-line you really are (though I hate to say it) talking with an imaginary friend; this person says all the right things and can basically be anything you want them to be. In real-time you get to deal with a real-live person, individual and independent of all the things you’ve imagined about them. That’s so much more rewarding.” - excerpt from an e-mail The safe little shield. I’m wondering what this means. Safe little shield on which side, the transmitter’s or the receiver’s? I have a shield nowadays, but I didn’t always. It was...

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Posted on 4 Jun 1998 | Comments Off