Making pretty children

My father wrote me yesterday and told me I was absolutely beautiful. He then went on to congratulate himself and my mother for making pretty children. I know it's not supposed to count when it's your dad but I still feel pretty terrific.

Happy Tails, a Fort, and 10 (unsuccessful) tries to take a photo together

This picture doesn't do it justice but the tiny people in the picture actually built the fort and had returned with beer. I told them I thought it was awesome.



Unsuccessful attempt to get picture at fort. Every picture that I look decent in or manage to even be in the frame, she looks like she's being held against her will.

Fill in the _______

I have bathed, eaten, and napped today. Aside from walking the dog, I have not accomplished much. If I knew that most people or even many people had not even left their house, I would probably feel better about myself. But I suppose there will always be someone I can compare myself with when I'm determined to feel bad about myself. Which brings me to something I've been mulling over for a few days, filling in the blanks.

Filling in the blanks is what happens when I see a person walking down the sidewalk with a yoga mat. I assume they have their shit together in spades and I get frustrated with everything they are that I am not. I don't know a thing about them but I take that snapshot of them walking down the sidewalk and slide it in the self-recriminating section of my mental wallet. Same thing during encounters with couples. Even if I know enough about them to wonder how it works, I still ascribe to them some quality that eludes me and all the happiness a heart could hold. I can even envy a friend of mine who is working through a painful separation likely to end in divorce for at least managing to get married. Or a girl walking down the street looking cute and put together for making an effort and enduring some small suffering, a cold head, less comfortable feet, to look nice. I can fill in the most innocuous observations; if I made it into a drinking game, I would never be sober.

I have shied away from determinations and resolutions this year but I have been making a semi-conscious effort to stop assuming everyone has some slice of the life I want for myself. To reflexively denigrate who I am and what is great about me because of what I am not. I just watched a movie where a guy realizes his rival never had the life he envied. Truer words were never written. I used to interview people interested in applying for my old career field and I always led with the things that sucked about the job. When people saw us, it was always for that 1/10 of the time we seemed to be doing something exciting or cool. They didn't see the remaining 9/10 of report writing, meetings, lawyers, evidence collection, autopsy, trash covers and all the other spade work that came before and after the 30 minutes of actual cool stuff.

Today I walked the dog on a bright sunny day in record breaking snow. We encountered an awesome fort, complete with a cardboard flag. The snow was powdery and my old combat boots were warm. I talked with friends, had a yummy lunch and a lovely nap. I am clean. Large swaths of my house are clean. I am going to see if I can set up a mini-tripod to get a picture of me and Baloo at the fort. I'll bet at least one person who sees us will wish they had my life.

Botch.com

Every now and then I am tempted to outsource my dating life and rejoin a dating website. I just get an itch to engage, to just have guy energy around me. Usually you can search before you join and so I'll just do a quick run based on age and location. And then I am again cool with being single because the search never returns a profile or picture I just have to know more about.

Wow

Imagine my surprise after a full 24 hours of news coverage on the snowstorm pummeling the northeast U.S. to log on to my computer and see that something else was indeed happening in other corners of the globe. I'll bet people in Haiti with the means to get news know how much snow fell in Philadelphia. For craps sake people, how many ways can you talk about salt, snow, ice, and precipitation totals?

I am Legend, you are Legend

Further to the introspection following another night of PBS, I have been thinking of Cuban Pete. I caught snippets of a program where he was speaking to a class at the Art Institute here in Philadelphia. He and his partner did a dance version of VH-1 Storytellers, dropping names of people and places the students had no context or appreciation for and then at his own request and urging would dance for the students. They were respectful but not engaged and one guy in particular caught my attention with his bemused expression. His eyes. They were the same eyes I have when having a ridiculous and unnecessary conversation with a homeless man. I could tell the students thought Cuban Pete was funny, thought the whole thing was funny. The instructor was breathless with praise for how well he could articulate his joints and how well he moved (read: for his age). Praise born of low expectations. Another student talked about how well he used to dance and called him a living legend.

But I looked at those kids and thought, you are Cuban Pete. You will talk about that Chris Brown joint and try to krunk when you are 70. Jay Z will be at the Art Institute of Philadelphia rapping to a bunch of bemused college students and they will watch his old videos with a smile tugging at the corners of their mouth, entertained by what we considered entertainment. Beyonce's Single Ladies and the viral phenom of copy cat videos will have kids born in 2050 rolling in the aisles. Only the annoying hipsters of the future will know who Coldplay is. If we're lucky, we'll all become living legends. But that is the beauty of youth. Why shouldn't we all think for a time that we are creating the earth anew? Some people actually do crank out something in their youth that changes the world. Still I loved how caught up in how cool they were, the students, and how none of them seemed to recognize their future shuffling along to Mambo music and telling the stories of when he was just as cool as they.





p.s. on the video, his dance partner in his twilight years; straight scary lips. Heath Ledger as The Joker. For reals.

I am becoming

The kind of person who watches PBS and is seriously considering a membership and tote bag. I am recognizing myself. I am checking myself out in the mirror and choosing to have something good to say. I have been grateful, incoherently grateful for french press coffee, a twin sized furry soft fleece blanket I have co-opted as a throw, and for my wake-up buddy whose 0530 call ensures my eyes will be heavy at 2100.

I have been grateful for my ever willful dog. For forcing me to scream and yell like a crazy lady when she quickly tries to choke some unidentifiable sidewalk contraband down her gullet. For making me reach in for it and continue yelling and commanding her to drop it while she does Lab calculus to determine if she can resist long enough to swallow it whole. I'm grateful that my lab-o-lantern is slowly growing her hair back and that she doesn't have gross stitches to rub against me anymore.

I am grateful for a friend who thinks I should write a series of books and thinks it is a terrific idea for the title of one to be Soul Turds. That one will be dedicated to her.

I am curious why I continue to engage when homeless men talk to me. Last weekend a homeless man asked me if I would marry him if he stopped drinking. I told him that anything is possible. Why would I say that? Why? That's the sort of response that lands a girl on Dateline Mystery. Anything is possible? Really, Ava? That is possible? You and nameless homeless guy who called you the 'n' word last time you saw him? That is possible? All I could do is laugh and check over my shoulder often as I continued on with my walk. I can be so incredibly stupid sometimes. I would like to become someone who does not feel obligated to engage in crazy conversations with homeless men.

Still sorting and working through this blog fast. It's not a writers block, there are volumes being composed in my head. I just haven't figured out where I'm supposed to write them down. I started toting my journal to work and have jotted a note or 2 down there. I feel like I'm looking for a pair of good looking comfortable heels. So, so elusive. So, so fantastic if you find them. I've been getting up at 0530 and have been very resourceful at finding ways to eat away at all the time I should have. Today I watched Steve Wilkos until 8 am. WTF? Yesterday I napped after coffee on the couch in the gratitude provoking fleece throw. I guess this will just be my slug week. Last week I was doing push-ups, yoga, and laundry before work. This week, not so much. Yin and Yang.