Aaaagghh. Just got caught up in stupid internet back-and-forth. Bothered to respond and defend myself, and of course everything I said was taken to reflect in the worst possible light on me. I can’t stand giving in to shit like that. The internet just wants to make you feel bad, and I know better than to let it, and I still let it.
FUCK.
So the dress from China came. It’s a little…weird. There’s no zipper, for one thing; the only fastening is the lace up the back. The boob cups in the front are small in this strange way, and it has a double lining for no apparent reason whatsoever. Also, it doesn’t look much like the picture on the site.
After some diligent Googling I finally found the actual designer and model of the dress. It’s a Sophia Tolli from about two years ago and retails for about $1000. I found some detail pictures of it, and really the dress I’ve bought is quite a poor imitation.
I called a friend of our family who is an extremely competent seamstress, and she advised me that if I wasn’t completely sure, I should send it back. I wasn’t, so I’ve decided to send it back. I read the return policy carefully and learned that I had only three days to ship it back or it would not be accepted, and that I had to contact them before returning it. I contacted them, and they told me that they don’t accept returns for custom dresses. I reread their return policy, found that they were double-crossing me, and copy-pasted the policy to another email, telling them I was sending it back today and expected a refund. To be honest, I don’t expect a refund; I expect them to hang on to my delicious American dollars for dear life, but I’m going to try my damndest to get it back anyway before I give up. If I don’t, eh, it’s $200 – not a fortune. I can either sell the dress on eBay, making no bones about how non-nice it is, or I can use some of the material for the custom-made dress that I’m planning.
Yeah, that’s right. The friend of the family I mentioned told me that she was willing to help me put together a custom dress, by finding patterns, and either by finding a seamstress or by sewing it herself. This is what I’ve wanted all along, a custom dress, and after thinking it over this morning I’m pretty darn sure about what I want it to look like. I’m apprehensive about having a friend make my dress (I think she really wants to), because if it turns out wrong or she goes in a direction I don’t like, I won’t know how to deal with it without ruining the relationship. But I’m just trying to go with the flow right now and see what happens. She’s definitely a skilled enough seamstress.
I’m not disappointed that this dress didn’t work out, because truly the design was too romantic for my personality and I wasn’t necessarily expecting something perfect from China, but I am extremely disappointed that the dress-shopping isn’t over.
I also got the contract from Chautauqua yesterday, but there are things about it I need to talk over with the facilities woman. I’m not sure if some of the terms apply to us, and if they do there will be trouble. Our major deposit isn’t due until January, so that’s a load off my mind; a smaller deposit is due in late May, but we can definitely handle that one.
In other news, I spent the last three nights watching Jerry Maguire for the first time in installments, and I was really, really impressed. I never thought I would like that movie, it seemed too populist for me, but I had no idea how well it was written and how marvelous the performances were. The unpredictability of Cameron Crowe’s films, the way that they twist and turn such that you really don’t know where he’s going with this, is a delightful change from the staid structure of most American film, and the characterizations were really a nice treat. I thought it went off track starting about 45 minutes from the end, but it was still an interesting set of choices.
Gotta get to work. Laterz.
What do you choose not to write about in your blog?
One of my New Year’s resolutions was to write more about sex and my struggles with it, and so far I have failed. Most of the reason is that this is the place I want to write about it, but I’m hesitant. By no means am I shy about sex, but I don’t know to whom I write in this medium. Also, BF is not just a character in this continuing story that you’re reading; he’s a real man with feelings and opinions and privacy of his own, and it would be wrong to cast him as a walking shadow here. My refusal so far to talk about my sexual issues has stemmed from wanting to protect myself, because after all a few of you do know me in person now, but much more so to protect him and his privacy.
Yet I can no longer ignore that something’s going on and I need to work it out. Writing about it here has worked exceptionally well for the last two years for all my other problems. You’re all supportive and helpful. I can’t ignore that writing about my own struggles could help someone else, or could allow someone to open up in a way that they need for their own peace of mind. I’m still reticent, and now I’ve come to the threshold where I want your opinion.
Where’s your line? Why? Do you think I’m handling this the right way as it is, or that I should throw caution to the wind? Your thoughts are most welcome.
Writing this post is actually a reward for work well done. I just went through an enormous box of a client’s paperwork, and removed and unfolded about 972 bank statements from the envelopes they came in that he had decided were a good storage system for them. I threw the envelopes away. That’s right, I did. This guy had given us unnecessary tax assessment documents for his house dating back to 1980, which meant I was handling documents that were older than me. I don’t feel a bit sorry for tossing out his stupid envelopes.
(There was also a document in that file that had been stamped by the county clerk in November 1946. That was kind of cool to unfold and handle.)
I will be teaching three classes a week come May: Friday nights from 5:30 to 6:30 PM, Sunday mornings at 8:30 AM, and Sunday afternoons at 4:00 PM. Two of those time slots are definitely losers, especially during the summer, but I’m not really expecting much out of teaching them other than experience (and probably a good amount of reading while I wait for people to show up). The Friday class will only be until September, when N will take it back over. I don’t know what happened with her, because now she has no classes on the schedule at Ridgely at all, but it’s not really my business. I’m kind of excited about having the extra time slots, because if I manage to teach at Lululemon at all this summer, I can tell people the three different time slots in the hope they’ll show up to one of them. I had a long talk with at BF last night about all the numerous problems I see with working at Ridgely, but I have to point out that I’m so grateful to them for giving me chance after chance to work up my experience and clientele.
After my AACC class is over, I’m going to start taking classes at Golden Heart a couple of times a week. In part I want to remember what it feels like to be a yoga student again, in part I want to get in better shape, and in part I want to scope out Golden Heart. I went to a workshop there and didn’t really fall in love with the place, but it’s the only other studio in Annapolis that I’m not familiar with, so it’s time for the college try.
What else is going on…I’ve been putting off making vegetarian shepherd’s pie for about three weeks now, and I think tonight I’m finally going to do it. Yesterday I met a veterinarian who was so thoroughly underwater in terms of debt that it took my breath away. MP invited me up to Chautauqua over the long weekend of Memorial Day, but I don’t really want to go at this time of year, so I’m debating about what to tell them. Something weird is going on in my subconscious as regards sex. My mom leaves for a three-month research trip in Europe in two weeks. I watched The Hangover and was surprised not only at how much I liked it, but how much I learned about the way men interact. Last night, a comedian died in New York.
Boo, I say, to this weekend.
The easiest Boo I have is to Interview with the Vampire, which I watched this afternoon for the second time in my life, and which I believe now I’ll never bother with again. The first time I saw it I found it overdramatic, gothic to the point of ridiculousness, and draggy. I found these same qualities this time around, but I wasn’t in quite as good a mood. Say whatever you like about the Twilight movies, at least there’s a minimum of the snarling-vampire-with-blood-dripping-from-his-fangs crap. I also felt uneasy with all of the homosexual tension floating around - not because I’m uneasy about homosexuality, but because everyone else seemed to be – the actors, the writer, the director - and yet they put it in there anyway.
Boo number two is directed at yesterday, in which virtually the entire day was spent doing things I did not choose to do. I left the house at 11:30 with MM and we went together to BF’s cousin’s wedding shower, which was at a very fancy country club in Potomac. There were dainties to eat and plenty of champagne, but in general it was a girly afternoon with lots of people I didn’t know and seemed to go on forever and I really would rather have been at home with my feet up. I got a lot of questions about my own shower which no one but MM knows that I’m not having, and was told that even though I don’t want one at all, I would be tied up, gagged, and forced to attend a bachelorette party held for me. I joked that they could have one in my honor instead, ha ha ha. This was lots of fun for me, did I mention that? After the shower was finally over MM took me back to her house, where BF had been all day with MD cleaning out the attic and the basement. They are having a yard sale of epic proportions next weekend, where they will sell about 30 years’ worth of accumulated unnecessary stuff. I don’t think they’ve had a single yard sale in 25 years – can you imagine how much stuff that is?
BF and MD had spent all day on this project, and it still wasn’t nearly done by the time MM and I got back. I know that MM will be spending a good deal of next week on it, but still…they should have started in March. Or maybe scheduled an additional date for the sale in another two weeks. Also, do you know who will be spending all of next Saturday at this yard sale, helping? Yep, you guessed it.
So MM made us dinner after I helped the boys a little, still in my wedding-shower dress and wedding-shower shoes and wedding-shower makeup, and then we ate it and talked until about 8:30, when BF and I finally piled in the car and went home. And went straight to bed, without passing Go or collecting $200. Yes, it was early, especially for a Saturday night, but I was tired from having to socialize and BF was tired from looking at endless boxes of toys and comic books (he’s keeping the comics), and we dropped right off. Easily the best part of the day.
A non-boo goes to my subconscious, which gave me a very detailed and very sexy dream about Robert Pattinson which also involved a swimming pool and Justin Timberlake (to whom I’m not attracted at all). And then I woke up and went to teach yoga. I quickly wrote a backbending class in the hopes of shaking off the mildew and poor temper that had formed over my head, but even three wonderful regulars couldn’t accomplish it. I taught a fun class and wasn’t sorry, but I didn’t get a feedback form and I’d really wanted to sleep in.
Boo to my studio, which for some reason skipped over me when doing payroll last week. It happens, and it’s like $50, but it still would have come in handy. Hopefully it’ll get straightened out and I’ll have a check tomorrow afternoon. Boo to N, who has decided she’s not going to teach on Sundays at 4:00 at all. The other two weeks of the month have been offered to another teacher, but she doesn’t seem to want to do it, so I volunteered. I really think it’ll be a good time slot for yin yoga, when I get to be able to teach it, and although I’m betting it’ll be slow all summer, I don’t mind that much. I mind that N has decided to drop it after saying she wouldn’t, because I could have just started April by being the sole teacher in the time slot. But it’s not much of a surprise.
Boo to BF’s work, who have stolen him away from me today.
Boo to my feet, which are so unaccustomed to wearing heels that my adventures on Wednesday, when I wore low heels and had to unexpectedly walk to and from the courthouse twice, created blisters on the bottoms of my feet that, despite popping them at least four times and eventually punching larger holes in them so they’d stop filling up, still hurt. I guess I should boo the heels, not my feet, because my feet are just doing their best. But they’re what’s hurting.
Boo most especially to myself. I have been procrastinating all day long rather than studying for the exam I have tomorrow night. I am so not motivated to get a good grade on this test, because I’m three weeks from the end of this nightmare and at this particular moment in time I no longer give a damn about finishing it well, and I’m also tired and cranky and feel cheated out of my weekend and time with BF and have 800 chores to do and waaaaaaaaaaaah. (And I spent about 15 minutes trying to find audio of Lucille Ball saying “waah” so I could link to it, and failed.)
So, Boo. Not that any of the weekends in 2010 have been terribly satisfying, but this one ranks a distinct and paralyzing Boooooo.
I have never liked Roger Ebert. While he is a good writer, he is not a good critic – he lacks insight, he can apparently be bought, and his taste appears to waver between bad and worse. I believe he believes himself to be the greatest film critic of our time; in fact, he is simply the most famous. His reviews often display what amounts to a failure to comprehend the more complex aspects of cinema (his review of Blue Velvet is a fine example), which he disguises as fair and functional criticism of the film to conceal his own confusion. He also stands on the shoulders of better critics to derive his understanding of canon film, which he then name-checks every chance he gets. He exploits his celebrity to gratify his ego, something no critic should do. The task of the critic is to comment on the film, which comment may be helpful to me in choosing whether to see it or not; the critic does not decide what is and what is not. This is a distinction many critics fail to make as they get more entrenched in their careers, and Ebert is an ideal example. It pains me to witness this, because despite his lack of ability as a critic he is nevertheless extremely influential. In an interesting way, though, he is speaking to his audience: the majority of mainstream America probably would not like Blue Velvet either.
Mr. Ebert has decided, now, that he is the arbiter of taste for media other than film. Last week, he wrote an article laying down the law that video games are not art, and never will be art. And oh, how well this has worked out for him so far. Read more »
The Razzies do not lie, the critics were not wrong: Howard the Duck is a terrible movie.
Really. Terrible. Trust me.
Through Penny Arcade, I came upon this page last night, and the words in that article tumbled down a rabbit-hole of memory, bringing me straight back to the time when I spent a whole lot of my life becoming familiar with that entire vocabulary. I read Dune when I was in high school, and decided, simply because I wanted to know what happened next, to keep reading. I ended up reading all six original Dune novels. I stopped there, unwilling to wade on through Brian Herbert’s oeuvre, because long before the end of the first six had Paul Atreides vanished, and he interested me the most of all the elements of Arrakis and its denizens. I have since referred back to this marathon of sci-fi as one of the hardest projects I have ever undertaken. It was a chore to read those books, a long, hard slog, and I’m not willing to mitigate that with any kind of depth of enjoyment I got out of it. By the end, I’d determined that the Herberts had gotten their money’s worth out of me. I will never read any more Dune as long as I live.
The thing that kept me going through the last two books was being able to say that I’d tried my best to explore the universe of Dune, and that I hadn’t given up once the books lost my interest. I went the whole hog. I hadn’t yet learned the lesson that I cannot read all the books in the world, and that if a book doesn’t like me or vice versa, the best thing to do is close it, pass it on, and pick up something else with no hard feelings. At that time, I gave everything the college try (or, in this case, the graduate school try), and this non-quitting aspect of reading the Dune books I don’t regret.
I’m in sort of the same position now with my AACC class that I was then, except I’ve just learned that there are thousands fewer pages to go than I’d thought. It turns out that I have a 93 average, not even including the six-point curve the teacher has decided to implement, and not including some extra-point assignments I have yet to turn in. I’ve been stressing badly about the class because the one exam and quiz that I didn’t study carefully for were both Fs, so I’ve been studying frantically ever since. The class structure allows you to drop one quiz and one test from your average, but I’ve used up my one heart early in the semester, and if I can’t dodge all the remaining enemies in the level, I’m done for. Which is why I’ve been stressing out. But with a 93 average I can afford to relax a little bit and not worry if I get a C on any of the remaining exams.
Still. It’s a slog. This, too, will be one of the hardest stickings-out that I’ve ever done. I know I’ll be proud of myself six months from now, that I did it instead of quitting, but that idea didn’t help me during Heretics of Dune, and it’s not helping me now.
I don’t promise it’s terribly good for you, but I promise it’s tasty. You can substitute with soy sausage and some olive oil to grease it up. Do that, and if the soy sausage is vegan, the recipe is too.
Sizzlin’ Slammin’ Succotash
1 lb beef kielbasa, sliced into 1/2-inch rounds
2 bell peppers, your pick of colors, chopped
1 can Del Monte Fresh-Cut Whole Kernel Corn (this is the only kind of canned corn I EVER buy)
1 can hominy*
Couple pinches red pepper flake
Salt & pepper
Dump the hominy and the corn into a saucepan with their can juices. Add red pepper flake and salt & pepper to taste. Cook over medium-low heat until there are some bubbles and steam, and the corn and hominy are tender and hot.
Meanwhile, heat a wide, deep skillet over medium-high. Put in the kielbasa and adjust it so that one cut side is down on each of the rounds. Let it cook until a lot of the juice is released and the rounds are browning, then turn them over (you can be sloppy about this if you’re…not me) and cook until both sides are browned. Likely you will get some caramelization out of this.
Dump in the bell pepper. Cook to your preferred level of cooked bell peppers (I have a low threshold for this). Stir frequently. When the bell peppers are juuuust about done, drain the hominy and corn and add them to the skillet. Stir everything around until the hominy is a little colored from the juices. Serve immediately.
For a lower-fat version, you insane person, drain the kielbasa on paper towels and wipe out the pan. Use olive oil to cook the bell peppers, then add everything back in over heat for a minute or so to reheat the kielbasa.
*I recommend Goya hominy. If you’re in the South, there are plenty of other good brands. I recommend against Manning’s, which for some sadistic reason has removed the yummy little kernels from the center of the hominy. If you have no idea at all what hominy is, use this recipe to give it a try (unless you have a corn allergy, in which case you you should not try hominy at all, ever). You will hopefully find it among the other fine Goya products in the Hispanic aisle at your local grocery store.
Extremely achy and sore today after teaching yesterday (twice). Right now the schedule is that I’m teaching the 4 PM classes for the first two weeks of the month, and another teacher, N, is teaching the last two weeks of the month. I thought I’d be glad to pick up another class time, but so far it’s been a real dud; one person the first week, nobody the second week. I was kind of glad not to have to do it this week…until I checked my email Sunday morning and found a plea from N, who had gotten the flu and then given it to her not-quite-one-year-old girl. Great. (More on N below.) So I agreed to show up for it, and one guy came, and I’m getting ahead of myself.
So I went to my 8:30 class. Since that class switched from 8 to 8:30 and the studio provided very little support for helping people know about the change, I’ve been showing up at about 7:40 to make sure that if people still have the old schedule, I am there to let them know about the new time. (And no, this hasn’t been for nothing.) A middle-aged guy was already waiting in his car when I got there, and he came into the studio at 7:50 to check in. I told him the class was at 8:30, and he went on in the studio and waited for forty minutes for class to start. I felt really, really bad – I mean, 40 minutes is half the length of the class! – but I didn’t want to make small talk with him and I didn’t know what else to do with him.
Two others showed up: a woman who appeared to be in her early 60′s whom I’ve never seen before, and a regular of mine who’s been sticking it out since January with me. So I started class. The older woman, it turned out, was quite strong and, while she had bad knees and was not terribly limber, she easily kept up with a decently-paced vinyasa class. Color me surprised. The middle-aged guy had clearly done a great deal of gym yoga. I’m not dissing gym yoga per se, it has its place, but he had bad habits and bad alignment, and he tried to power through a lot of the class instead of releasing into it. He was also not at all accustomed to a teacher’s hands on him; he tensed and trembled when I adjusted him. (I am aware of what else might have been causing these reactions, thank you.) And my regular was my regular – working hard without pushing, doing well without showing off.
My regular had to leave before savasana, and then the guy, after savasana, completely ignored all of my vocal cues and just sat right up out of it. I bring students slowly out of savasana, because that’s what I like to have done for me, and he didn’t go along with what I was saying at all. He also didn’t sit meditatively after he sat up, he was looking around and moving quite a lot. I don’t attach to what students do and not do when I give them cues, but I felt like this was disrespectful – both to me and to the other student, who had the opposite reaction and was so relaxed that she didn’t hear my cues at all.
Overall it was not a fun class to teach. I enjoyed having a couple of new people, but whenever I have older-than-middle-aged people in a class, I always worry that I’m making them hate yoga because my classes are so vigorous. (And I never know if they’ll be back.) So I was anxious most of the time. Plus, three people was exactly the wrong number: too many to get a one-on-one feedback form, too few to get a group feedback form. I went home in a slightly bad mood – I had written and taught a good class, and I knew it, but the same frustration I’ve had for four months, that I don’t have a good-sized class full of students enjoying themselves, was raging inside my brain.
What’s bothering me about this a lot right now is the feedback form thing. If I’ve written about this before, and my addled Monday-brain simply can’t remember it, I apologize for repeating myself. In order to be actually certified to teach yoga, I have to collect 20 feedback forms from group classes and 5 feedback forms from private classes and hand them in to White Lotus. I have taught a lot more than 20 classes, but most of them have had one or two people in them, and since I only have to collect 5 of those forms, I’m missing a lot of feedback that I need. I’m feeling like the White Lotus experience hasn’t really closed for me, since this feedback thing isn’t finished, and that’s a difficult sensation. I’m not denying the wonderfulness of the experience, but I’m ready to leave it behind me as a glorious memory and move forward, and I can’t yet.
So then I went to the afternoon class, which I’d agreed to do for N. I had one student, a middle-aged man who was unbelievably stiff, reminding me a lot of my unhappy experiences with MD. He was a regular at one of the classes I used to go to, on Mondays, before I started taking class at AACC again. I appreciated that he was trying to take care of himself, but GOD, I am just awful at teaching stiff people. It makes me so frustrated and unhappy. I feel like I’m not helping them, and I feel limited by their limitations. It’s immature of me, and I know that, and I’ve accepted it, but I just can’t figure out a way to deal with it when a really stiff person comes into one of my classes. This guy seemed to want to struggle on through it bravely, which I admired, but didn’t make the class any easier for me.
When I got home I was very cranky. I had to study for the test I have tonight, go to the grocery store, figure out what to do for dinner, and then get up and go to work the next day. And N didn’t have to do any of that; she just had to take care of herself and her baby.
I have been having nothing but uncharitable feelings for N for approximately the past year. This makes me feel like a rotten person. But here’s how it went down: she’s about my age, and she and her husband moved here in 2008 from Iowa. Annapolis has got to feel pretty weird. I started taking her classes, and we became somewhat friendly. Although she was pregnant when I met her, and I knew that would be a challenge because I have zero interest in children, I still thought it would be nice to be friends with her; she’s bright and interesting and I thought she might want to know at least one person her age in the area. But except for a single double date with me, BF, and her and her husband, she has done nothing but promise to get in touch with me about when we could meet for coffee or lunch or whatever, and then has never followed through. I feel like either she’s been constantly blowing me off for some reason of her own, or she is just too scattered to be friends with me. (And I’ve been The Organized One in friendships. Ain’t doin’ that no more.)
I’m also resentful of her because she doesn’t work except for teaching yoga. (And not very consistently, at that – she’s always getting subs so she can spend more time with her daughter, even when she’s not sick.) She is taking care of a baby, which is easily a full-time job, and I know that, and would not trade places with her for the world. But the simple fact that she doesn’t work makes me pretty upset that she can’t get it together enough to have coffee with me, when I work and teach and go to class and take care of BF (to some degree).
I’m being a little childish and unreasonable, but now that I’ve gotten into the habit of harboring these negative feelings towards her, it’s hard to stop.
That is a long post for a Monday morning. I did other stuff I wanted to tell you about – BF and I went to a Qi Gong workshop together, which was interesting, and I ate this really neat sandwich. But I think this’ll do for now.
Calligraphy by Stewart Thomas
