Photo Courtesy of furryscaly – creativecommons.org

perform becomes five times as arduous, leading to my development of a variety of coping mechanisms.
Usually the first to be established is one that shaves off unnecessary, but commonly executed steps used to complete a task. For example, this morning, I buttered my toast with my pointer finger, thereby eliminating the need to walk over from the toaster to the utensil drawer, open the weighty thing, grab a butter knife, close said weighty utensil drawer, and walk back to the toaster area. I also just realized that I saved myself an extra dish to wash. All of these little steps, believe it or not, add up by the end of the day. By the end of today, I’ll have expended about half as much energy as the average American and feel as though I slept for at least six hours the previous night.
Walking somehow becomes a major inconvenience that I try to avoid. Unfortunately, I can’t just sit or lay around all day; if I could, I’d probably try and go back to bed. On those occasions when I absolutely must exert myself, I find myself resorting to affirmations. I repeat to myself things like, that’s right, legs; good work! And, good, right leg, now try and coordinate your movement with the left leg! Sometimes I see my legs as siblings, other times I see them as friends; Just follow the example of your sister (or buddy) over there, she’s got the hang of it!
When the affirmations don’t work, I have to fall back on both my sense of morality and of sentimentalism. I tell myself that I have an urgent purpose that requires walking. In this circumstance, I shout out things in my head such as, We must rescue the puppies before it’s too late! We’re the only ones that can save them. Of course, the we is comprised of only myself and my two legs.
These approaches typically suffice until my morning coffee has sent its magical little signals (I’m awful with chemistry and the science behind my neurons and all that which explains how my mind functions at all) to my brain and induces me to rattle throughout the rest of my day. At around 8pm, when the coffee begins to wear off, I usually have had an uncommonly productive day and am prepared for the caffeine to wear off, flopping around the bedroom with mechanically even-paced movements, clad in John’s navy blue sweatpants. By 8:30, I’m ready to be handed a cuddly stuffed animal and tucked in. But at least I end up with twelve hours of sleep and my eyes end up looking fairly normal the following day.

As far back as I can remember, my parents have been posting messages on bulletin boards, hoping for the off-chance that one of them would catch the right person’s eye. In retrospect, the whole process is akin to notes written on Ellis Island and New York City walls by freshly docked immigrants looking to unite with their relatives.

All of her passwords are related to either her mother or her adoption. She’s written songs, poetry, and little stories about either finding and meeting her mother, or her experience of bereavement. She has always looked into the mirror and wondered which parts of her came from her mother; she’s always looked at me and wondered the same thing.

And, at this very moment, 1:20pm Boulder time, she’s in Raleigh, North Carolina, having lunch with a woman who has been omnipresent in her life. It fills me to just think about it. Nothing rivals this moment.

Image credit: efleming from creativecommons.org

As I came down with an obnoxious head cold that rendered me unfit for leaving the house, John chivalrously rode off to the grocery store and came back with two of our three blue, reusable bags filled with different kinds of plastic-packaged falafels and “Tahina” (which sounds like Tahini, but has other stuff in it, too). The third bag contained two boxes of corn flakes and a sweet potato.

When he walked in two hours later and set the bags on the counter for unloading, I hungrily climbed out of bed to greet him.

“Seriously, I don’t know what took me so long!” He explained, innocently unloading the bags of falafels. “I seriously just walked around for awhile.”

When he’d unloaded everything, he looked at the items on the kitchen counter searchingly and shook his head. “Damn. I forgot the almond milk.”

Anyhow, I blame plastic lids for searing the tender part of my tongue off and leaving it the texture of used sandpaper. Each lid is, in actuality, a Kokopelli of plastic, appearing harmless, and even sexy with all of its smooth contours; it seduces its holder into pressing her lips to its lip, and then sets her tongue afire when she rather expects a comforting and gradual pick-me-up. Alas, the victim’s food will be as tasteless as a wedding gift from Walmart for the next few days.

Photo Courtesy of Creative Commons: karen horton

And on the cover of Sarah Palin’s book, Going Rogue, there is a picture of her standing amongst the clouds, with a far off look in her eyes. She was probably looking at Russia. She had probably just sated her blood lust by murdering some endangered animals from her helicopter, and was looking to Russia, hoping the Russians would make her a stylish fur hat.

I don’t have much time, so I’d like to just put out there that I detest Sarah Palin.

This is the reason why I look especially nice today. I even woke up half an hour early this morning to rub fresh, really fragrant flowers all over my body. John thinks that I’ve all of a sudden started looking forward to going to work, that I’ve turned into a 9-5 sophisticate. But I haven’t; My survival mechanism has just kicked in.

Say my ‘98 Mazda Protege bravely makes its way through the white and crunchy streets and suddenly falls into a roadside ravine. I need to be well-dressed and definitely nice-smelling if I’m going to be cross-armed on the side of the road, waiting for some hillbilly to happen by with one of those bungee cord things on his tractor that he would hook up to my morose ‘98 Mazda Protege and drag back onto the road.

Photo courtesy of Creative Commons: SeRVe61

It’s one of those gloomy days. I understand that the word “gloomy”  has one of those dark and depressing connotations. That’s why I used it. To fool you. Ha! This cloudy day doesn’t connote gloominess at all!!

It’s been a fabulous morning. Perhaps that’s just because John has been doing butler impressions all morning and, just as I stepped out of the shower – mascara in impressionistic strokes across my cheeks, as though I were an extra in a dark and gloomy zombie film –, he declared that, “breakfast will be served in the piano room, Ms. Shayne.” The piano room is our mauve-walled office across the hall from our room (we have these grandiose plans to paint it an energetic blue and white, but still have to figure out how to move the piano out of there beforehand).

I yelled out, “Thank you, Jeeves!” And then I thought fondly of Evelyn Waugh until I sat before my computer to eat a piece of cinnamon raisin toast and a sausage. It was only then that I realized it was dark and gloomy out.

John lowered the blinds to block the clouds so that I all I could see were the bunnies chasing one another into and out of the shrubbery that serves as the focal point of our house’s cul-de-sac.

www.dictionary.com defines “Feminism” as such:

fem⋅i⋅nism

–noun

2.	(sometimes initial capital letter) an organized movement for the attainment of such rights for women.

There’s nothing in that definition referring to body hair.

Of course I know that a woman’s lack of shaving makes a statement and all that. But I think it’s really kind of a confusing statement. Men and women alike are thinking of feminists as primitivists, because the whole hair thing isn’t as powerful as it was in the ’60s and ’70s when everyone had to shave. Back then, having longer hair, or hair in uncommon places on one’s body (and I mean one’s own hair, mind you) was a cry of protest against the war and a call back to a time when everything was wild and free and peaceful and artistic and when humans were in-tune with nature, their own bodies and copious amounts of hallucinogens. The hair grew long so that one could hide his or her drafted friend within his or her long and disheveled locks.

If a woman doesn’t care to shave nowadays as an expression of her feminism , that’s completely fine with me – I have no qualms. On the other hand, it would be nice if people would stop linking me with bodily hair when I identify myself as a feminist. It’s like assuming that every Gay Rights supporter owns a pair of pink pants.

I don’t know, these are just some thoughts I’ve been having.

Photo Courtesy of Creative Commons: Todd Huffman

This is all particularly strange since I didn’t sleep all that well last night; John got up twice during the night for various reasons, none of which I particularly cared about at the time. I verbally scowled at him on both occasions, telling him to stop jumping out of bed as though it were Christmas. He asked me how else he should climb out of bed and I said something to the effect that he should be calmer about the whole process.

When I awoke the third time, it was 7 and my mobile phone nearly vibrated itself off the bureau beside my bed in alarm. I launched myself toward it. In a voice like Swiss cheese, John asked for the time.

‘It’s time to get up, of course!’ I cried over the sound of the shower I was preheating while I lined my toothbrush with paste. “Come on! Yay!’

Photo courtesy of scaredofbabies

Dearest John;

It was I who stole your cocoa dusted almonds. I’m very sorry. I wanted to leave this letter for you, so that you won’t blame your innocent and lovely girlfriend, Tasha. Also, I will replace them if you absolutely need me to, but that will have to be after my return from the Bermuda Triangle.

Hold your horses until then,

Margaret Thatcher