The Crying Game

I know all there is to know about the crying game. For me, it’s not just a song but a way of life. I am a crier. There, I’ve said it. I admit it. When it comes to blubbering I am just a big old… girl.

It all started when I was born. The first thing I did was cry and I’ve been bawling ever since. When I whack my head really hard on the corner of the kitchen cabinet, a habit that I’m told I’ve inherited through the maternal line - proven by the giant holes both my mother and grandmother have in their craniums from whacking their heads on kitchen cabinets - I cry. When I am angry I cry. When I am sad I cry. When I am tired I cry. Sometimes when I’m happy I cry.

Although I’ve learned how to harness my emotions somewhat over the years, I still have a long way to go, and I give myself a really hard time about it. Let’s face it. When you cry, you lose credibility, especially in an argument or in the work place. It shouldn’t be that way. When men get emotional they tend to get angry and put their fist through a wall. For some reason this is considered strong, stoic, and acceptable if not ideal. Women cry, and that is considered weak. Despite the increased numbers of women in the workplace this opinion has not changed. In fact, women have convinced themselves that it's correct.

At one of my first jobs in New York City everybody cried, but it was sort of okay because we were all women and gay men. As long as you didn’t cry in front of the boss and held it in till you were locked safely in a bathroom stall, it was cool. Since I was the human resources department, Who Is Crying In the Bathroom was often part of the receptionist’s daily report. “You have three interviews today. Invoices are due by Friday. Shelly is crying in the bathroom again.” Sometimes I’d go in and try to cheer them up, and usually ended up crying right along with them. You’d think we were curing cancer, as stressful as that job was, instead of planning parties and representing over-indulged celebrities.

When I saw the movie My Dog Skip I howled until my eyes were red and my face was covered in snot. There wasn’t enough Kleenex in the world to accommodate that sob-fest. I mean, the dog was lying there on the bed, just waiting for the kid to come home from college, and then he – he – he

Oh God, here I go again.

I’ve always admired those seemingly tough, in-control women who rarely cry. Their boyfriend could call them a fat-ass and they’d just look coldly at him while I’d be digging through the knife drawer for the sharpest one to slit my wrists. Luckily my eyes would be no more than swollen slits from crying so I’d miss the knife drawer entirely and be digging through harmless spatulas.

Since leaving New York I’ve cried at work a lot less, but last week I regressed a bit. My boss was nasty to me over the phone, and I slammed the receiver down, brimming with righteous rage, and marched down to her office to tell her off as calmly and professionally as possible, so as to make it clear that her behavior would not be tolerated. “The way you spoke to me just now was extremely inappropriate,” I told her. “Moving forward we need to find a better way for you to communicate constructive criticism.”

Doesn’t that sound great? It did to me, too, in my head. But unfortunately my little speech was delivered while my traitorous lip quivered and then, to my horror, the corners of my mouth turned down so far they connected under my chin and I started to cry.

Damn it damn it damn it.

So I’ve been really irritated with myself, especially since this is a new job and I'm still trying to establish boundaries and make a good first impression. But then this morning I read something that made me feel much better: Helen Gurley Brown is a crier, too.

For those of you unfamiliar, HGB is the woman who launched Cosmopolitan Magazine. While I’ve never been a huge fan of “You are Fine the Way You Are” side by side with “How to Catch a Man” articles, there is no disputing that HGB is one hell of a writer and editor, a one-woman powerhouse who inspired and oversees a magazine with a circulation well over one million. And she cries! According to the article I read, she cries all the time! She is a strong, successful woman AND she cries.

Could it be that the two are not mutually exclusive? Can I be a strong woman AND a crier? Just the thought makes me a little sniffly and – and- and… oh boy, here I go again. I'll just be in the bathroom for a - a- a- bit.

Popularity Breeds Content

Last night I experienced the thrill of meeting one of the world's most famous geeks, the owner/founder of a very well known and extremely successful dotcom. Although "thrill" is probably not the most accurate word to describe what turned out to be a completely unassuming, laid-back and drama-free introduction (unlike that of, say, a certain domestic diva I met a few years ago who shall remain nameless but who scared the bejeezus out of me.) He wore khaki's with his shirt tucked in and a really old saggy belt. He had Dilbert cartoons and Star Wars toys scattered around his office and over the door was a sign with the Star Trek logo that read "Bridge."

My husband was ecstatic when I told him this. The new popular crowd are his People.

The internet has redefined popularity. Popularity no longer has as much to do with looks and fashion as with the clever manipulation of technology and the ability to purchase and figure out a video camera. It is the Time of the Geeks where people like Bill Gates, who was probably dunked in the toilet by bullies when he was a kid, are considered the most popular and desirable.

I have never been popular. In high school, a time I refer to as The Darkness, I was a goth wannabee, only because I couldn't figure out what other group to fit into. I was naturally dark-haired, and naturally depressed, so goth seemed like the best option. I wasn't smart enough to hang with the academic decathalon crowd whose jokes all whizzed over my head as if spoken in Latin (actually some of them probably WERE spoken in Latin). I certainly wasn't pretty enough, perky enough, or blonde enough to be in the then-popular group populated by cheerleaders and prom queens. And I didn't have the bad fashion sense or heinous taste in music to join the cowboy group. So I settled for sort of a lower-tier goth but I didn't do terribly well there either because the idea was only to PRETEND to be melodramatic and depressed, not to actually BE depressed which was, well, depressing.

But times have changed.

Now popularity is defined not by how many friends you have, what kind of car you drive, how big your house is, how many boys like you, how you hold your liquor, or how many IRAs you have.

No, today's popular crowd is defined by one thing and one thing only: google hits.

There is no bigger loser than someone who comes up with NO HITS when you google them. Pathetic! The person I met last night has thousands of google hits and in many different languages. That, my friend, is one popular guy. And he looks and acts like what would have been defined back in high school as a dork.

So now the challenge is not to get a nicer car or figure out how to get the head cheerleader to date you. Now the challenge is to make your mark all over cyberspace so anyone who googles you will think you are a total dork and therefore not a loser. How's that for irony?

I got my first google hit by accident. I was writing for The Valley Planet at the time and they posted the paper online. I didn't really understand the true value of this until later; at the time I was more excited by the old-fashioned thrill of seeing my name in print, rather than on a screen. It wasn't until I discovered an obsession with googling that I started to consider my own somewhat pitiful content presence.

When the Valley Planet changed hands and became more of a gardening rag than the off-beat, left-wing publication it used to be, I left and started this website. But that wasn't enough. One website wouldn't make me popular. That would be like having only one pair of Guess jeans in 1986. It shows you care enough to get one pair but you're not cool enough to have more than that. (Yeah, guess who only had one pair of Guess jeans...?)

My sister-in-law introduced me to the wonders of myspace. I was able to regurgitate all my most useless thoughts and wacky photographs onto that page for the world, should they be so inclined to search for me, to see. I joined online recruiting tools and linked up with friends who wrote for online forums. And all the while I continued to google myself, a pasttime which has become akin to masturbating - everybody does it, but nobody admits it.

I've only recently stepped back from my vainglorious attempts to finally, at this late stage in life, join the popular group, when I discovered the downside to spreading your content for strangers (and, yes, I did mean that to come across as slightly vulgar): cyber-stalking.

Not just other people stalking me, but me stalking other people. It's addictive in a destructive way but, more importantly, it just points out what we already knew: I will never be popular. Because those popular girls managed to affect a complete disinterest in the number of people who admired them, while at the same time being perfectly aware of who did and did not. If they are the ballerinas of social interraction, I am the tasmanian devil. The trick that I have not mastered is to be an attention whore without anybody KNOWING you're an attention whore.

But here it is folks: I am a total attention whore. I can hide it no longer. Not that I ever did a very good job of hiding it to begin with.

In the meantime, I have sneakily managed to obtain one more google hit with this story about google hits. Now I just need to get my hands on some Star Trek memoribilia and I'm in. It's just a matter of time before I make Internet Prom Queen. I can feel it.

The #36

For some reason every time I take the #36 bus something weird happens. The first time I got the funny bus driver who punctuated every stop announcement by cheering "YAY!" He also liked to talk to the other drivers on the road, but more as a running monologue to himself. "Hey, yeah, try driving that way! That's a good idea."

The second time I took the #36 a woman got on with an unlit cigarette dangling from her bottom lip. "She's going to sit next to me, she's going to sit next to me," I thought as I watched her tumble onto the bus and make her way down the aisle. Sure enough, she sat right next to me (and the seats on the bus are designed so that you become immediately intimate with your seat-mate) and struck up an animated conversation with herself. Most of it was unintelligable except for when she said suddenly, quite loudly and clearly, "Why, thank you!" The voices must have been friendly ones.

Then this morning when I took the #36, with two stops to go before mine, a REALLY crazy guy got on and - you guessed it - sat right next to me. He had a cigarette which WAS lit, although he appeared to be unaware of this. My first thought was for the nasty cigarette; my second thought, which very quickly followed, was, "Oh fuck, how do I move without it being completely obvious?" Because, like the woman on the previous ride, this man also immediately struck up an unintelligable conversation except this one apparently included me. I caught only a few words like, "Look at you dressed like that" (I am wearing a t-shirt and jeans) and "you obviously one those women takes THREE HOUR LUNCHES looking like you do," which he helpfully elaborated upon by mumbling something like, "I know you prolly think you earn yo living and yo money every day but I bet you got one of them lunches looking like that sheeeeeeeeet."

I glanced around the bus looking for an escape or the kindness of a stranger to help me out but the back half was almost entirely empty. I did manage to catch the eye of a normal-looking guy in the last row, and he sort of smirked at me, clearly saying with his eyes, "Hey, man, glad it's YOUR problem and not mine."

Of course I'm no stranger to the charm of crazy or homeless people after six years in New York. I have a few fun stories. Like the time my dog Theo and I were standing on the street, minding our own business, and a homeless woman, threatened by my 19 pound fluffy dog sniffing a lamp post, walked straight up to Theo and smacked her over the head with one of her shopping bags. That didn't go over well with me and it resulted in my one and only vicious confrontation with a homeless person. She backed down. You don't fuck with an angered mother.

Then there was the time I was sitting at an outside table at a restaurant, people watching, and a crazy person ran up to a woman who was just walking down the street, clearly on her way home from work, and shoved her. The woman looked extremely startled and insulted for a moment and then, in true New Yorker fashion, her face slammed shut again and she continued on her way. It made for wonderful dinner entertainment.

But my favorite bum encounter by far was one morning when I was sitting on the steps in Union Square, enjoying coffee and a bagel with my favorite date - New York City. I was sitting there, grinning like an idiot, watching the people go by, when a bum approached me with a crumpled paper bag.

"Would you like a roll?" he asked me.

This was new. Usually they were the ones asking for food. I gestured at my bagel. "Thanks, but I'm all set."

He nodded and crouched a couple steps down from me. "Hey, what day is this?" he asked.

"Tuesday?" I suggested.

He shook his head. "No, man, I mean, is it that day with the parade?"

The problem with engaging in these types of conversations is that your sanity quickly puts you at a disadvantage. "What parade?"

"You know - the parade! With the funny people. And the hats. With all the green."

"St. Patrick's Day parade?" I guessed.

He slapped his thigh and howled as if I'd made a great joke. "That's the one! That one! Is it that day?"

"No," I told him, hating to be the bearer of such disappointing news. "This is September. St. Patrick's Day was in March."

"Aw shit," he said, shaking his head. "You mean I missed March AGAIN?"

I liked that guy.

Cancun Bust

After literally years of planning this trip (okay, more "we really should do this..." comments than actual planning) Katy and I finally had our girls-only vacation in Cancun. Unfortunately we had only one really good day of sunny weather and I got sick with a bad cold. I spent the majority of Cancun in bed while poor Katy roamed the hotel grounds alone (cue song "ALL BY MYSELF..."). Granted, there are way worse places on this planet to be either sick OR alone, and that one good day generated some pictures that will probably cause most of you to insist I quit my bitching. Truly it was a gorgeous paradise. The beaches were smooth white sand and the water an indescribable turquoise. Katy and I layed out on the beach under a wee grass hut sipping fruity alcoholic beverages brought to us regularly by super-sweet hotel staff. When the mood struck us for a change of scene we had the option of the giant jacuzzi with built-in tables and a swim up bar, one of three different pools - one of those also with a swim up bar and a D.J. who was fairly entertaining, especially after a good buzz, or roaming the hotel shops. Since I was Typhoid Karen pretty much right away we unfortunately skipped the grandiose plans we had for the trip like flirting with hot unknown men at dance clubs, parasailing, snorkeling, and visiting Mayan ruins. We consoled ourselves that this is an excellent excuse to go back some day. Our room was nice - lots of fancy pillows on the beds and marble floors and since it was an all-inclusive deal (check out Costco travel, man - we got an awesome deal for this trip!) we indulged in lots and lots and lots of decadent roomservice.

So while the local was gorgeous and beyond reproach, I was pretty sickly, snarfling and snorting and coughing and hacking, which, as you can imagine, was quite a turn-off to my loyal best friend and roommate, and we were both looking forward to coming home. The night before we left, the hotel across the way decided to engage in a project that involved seeing how loud their music would need to be in order for alien life forms to hear it on distant planets and want to come join the party. They finally gave up on this lofty goal around 2am, allowing Katy and me to get a few desperate hours of sleep before the airport shuttle picked us up.

Tip: if you go to Cancun, don't buy souvenier shit in the hotels. The airport has it all. And the tequila is CHEAP!!!

Katy boarded her flight and left without incident. In fact, she was lucky enough to get on an earlier flight after the shuttle service insisted on picking us up about a fortnight prior to our flight departures. I watched her plane go merrily on its way and then boarded my own plane. Which is when the real fun began!

We taxied to the runway as usual although we all started to notice it was uncomfortably warm in the plane. But whatever. It's like 90 degrees in Cancun so it's pretty uncomfortably warm in general unless you're in the ocean. But then the captain came on and said the aircon was broken, we couldn't fly to

Atlanta with it busted, and we were going to park it somewhere nearby the terminal and have the mechanics take a look. Which we did. For two hours. With no air conditioning. And

Mexico, in true one-step-behind-the-rest-of-the-world fashion, still wasn't allowing ANY liquids onboard, even those purchased in the airport. So to review: two hours, 90 degrees, 200 people, no water. Finally they showed mercy and let us off the plane where we waited in air conditioned but cigarette-smoke enfused comfort for another 2 hours until they figured out the problem and fixed the plane. And, no, there were no other flights they could put us on. So, about 5 hours after our scheduled departure, we finally left

Cancun in a plane whose fixed air conditioning, as if to make up for its slack, now kept the temperature hovering at a pleasant -20 degrees. Keep in mind I am slightly feverish at this point, short on sleep thanks to the UFO-party-seekers, fast running out of kleenex, dehydrated, and completely disgusting all the passengers around me with my typhoid cough. One woman actually got up and moved to another seat. (She was pretty obnoxious anyway and kept hitting me in the face with the shoulder strap of her bag, so I was pretty amused to scare her away.)Arrived in

Atlanta 9pm. Went through customs, claimed bags, re-checked bags, checked in at

Atlanta counter because of course my connecting flight had left ages ago. Last flight leaves 9:30pm. It is currently 9:20pm, and the flight, naturally, departs from another terminal. "What do I do?" I ask the scowling woman behind the counter while I'm trying to tug on my shoes after going through security. "Run," she dead-pans helpfully.So, coughing, snarfling, wheezing, and barefoot, I run. No - I sprint, putting those hours of treadmill experience to work. I get to the gate with 5 minutes to spare, but they've already sealed the gate. Federal Regulations state that they cannot let me on this plane. When the door's shut, it's shut. Opening it again would apparently cause a chain-reaction of events that would lead to nuclear war. Sorry. Bummer. Off you go. And please stop sweating all over our counter.I am sent to Delta customer service. At this point my voice is gone and I am pouring sweat. I stink like hell - I know it, I can smell it myself - after sweating on that Cancun runway for 2 hours and then sprinting through the airport. I haven't eaten since breakfast. And I am told that was the last flight to

Huntsville that night.In true I Am Woman Hear Me Roar fashion, I burst into hysterical tears that sounds like some sort of deranged donkey because of my hoarse, soar throat. I believe my tune went something like, "I want to go HOME I want to go HOME please please let me go HOME can't you see I'm SICK?!" But instead I was sent to a seedy Holiday Inn, left to wait for the shuttle in 32 degree weather with no coat and no luggage. Feeling more qualified than any person on earth (keep in mind all logical thought had been completely banished by my brain at this point) for a nice long bout of self-pity.But I made it to the Holiday Inn where I promptly called my husband and hee-haw-sobbed to him, who of course felt awful but could do nothing but spend his evening writing poisoned emails to Delta. I donned my Delta-bestowed t-shirt and climbed into bed, dozing now and then between coughing fits and waking at 7am to once again catch the shuttle back to the airport.

Upon arrival I discovered that my flight was - wait for it - delayed. This plane was broken too. An hour to an hour and a half.I was more broken than the plane, and reacted not at all to this news. I sat like a zombie at the gate, staring straight ahead, snorting, snarfling, coughing and driving away any chance to small talk with strangers (fine by me). And just as the terminal television announced the attempted hostile take-over of Delta by US Air, which brought the first smile to my face since the obnoxious woman changed her seat, they announced my flight was boarding.

And so... 25 1/2 hours after my ordeal began, I am home. In bed. Surrounded by soft kleenex and curled up with my doggie and awaiting the return of my husband who has gone out for reinforcements: more kleenex, orange juice and DVD's. And once again, all is right with the world. The End.

Whine Wine Whine

It's hot. No, I mean it. It's really really mother fucking hot. I was born and raised in Phoenix, Arizona so I am more than qualified to determine when it is hot. And it is hot. Did I mention...?

I love Seattle, I really do. I love the bus driver I get sometimes who likes to punctuate every stop announcement with a cheery "Yay!" As in, "Fifth Avenue and Pike. Pike Place Market, Pier 55, Pacific Place YAY!" Although I'm not much of a giggler at 8:15am before I've had my coffee, it can be amusing.

But for some reason Seattle does not believe in air conditioning. Apparently the argument is that air con is needed perhaps two or three weeks out of the year, and therefore installing a/c doesn't make much sense.

I've got ninety seven degrees and a pool of my own sweat that beg to differ.

Personally I think just ONE DAY over 80 degrees is reason enough for a/c. I HATE being hot. It makes me whine a LOT. Even the dog has spent the past several days, ever since the heat wave started, under the bed. Probably because she can't stand to listen to me bitch anymore.

At first I tried to combat the heat by drinking cold white wine. This resulted in my being drunk and hot and, eventually, hung over. Which resulted in more whining.

We decided, not just for my own sake but for my husband's who, since he can't fit under the bed, is left as the primary audience for my whining, to buy an air conditioner.

But again Seattle stepped in and announced its unwillingness to allow me to be comfortable in my own home. Not only is a/c not installed in most residential buildings, but it discourages the purchase and use of window units as well. All the windows in our apartment, which we raved about when we first moved in because of the view and because it was May and 64 degrees, swing out. Not up and down or side to side like every other window I've ever seen, but out. On hot days, with all the windows shoved open as wide as they can go, the building looks like it's gasping for breath.

But extensive online research presented a solution: a portable air conditioner. Portable air conditioners are infamous for being a) not portable and b) not air conditioners, in the sense of actually emitting cold air. But I didn't care. An air conditioner that didn't work, I reasoned, was better than nothing. Perhaps just having it in the room would psychologically convince me I was cooler.

Once we finally came to terms with the fact that we were going to shell out several hundred dollars (because portable air conditioners, in addition to not being portable and not emitting cold air, are also much more expensive than their far superior window unit counterparts) we set off for Costco, resigned and determined to spend a month's worth of fun money on keeping my body temperature set to Bitch instead of Mega Bitch.

But it seems that, despite Seattle's overall distrust of air conditioners, Seattlites themselves adore them. With the promise of temperatures in the 90's, the entire city headed to Costco. And the entire city apparently does not sleep in till eleven like we do on weekends. No, they get up at the crack of dawn and buy out all the Costcos of all the portable air conditioners. There were still LOTS of window units left of course, because nobody in Seattle has a window that can accomodate one.

"Gee," we said to ourselves, "maybe we should have thought of this sooner." But we weren't panicking yet. No, the panicking (and the desperate whining that steadily increased in octave the more stores we went to) kicked in about four hours later after we had exhausted every possible store in the city and all were sold out of portable a/c's. With the dreaded 90 just two days away I refused to risk an online purchase. Even if we paid the astronomical $70 for expedited shipping the thing STILL would have arrived a day after the heat wave was over.

It was 9:00pm that day when we decided to try one last store that we doubted even sold air conditioners, let alone would still have one. We were shocked and delighted to find that they DID in fact have ONE portable air conditioning unit left in stock. For $600.

Anybody who knows what I'm like when I am hot does not need to be told there was no hesitation. There was groaning, certainly, and great irritation at spending savings meant for a house down-payment on an air conditioner that we HOPED would be strong enough to cool just one of the small rooms of our apartment. But no hesitation.

This air conditioner has become like a family member for several reasons. One, it has indeed cooled the bedroom down to a comfortable temperature and so I love it. I love it more than my mom. My mom is a fantastic person and I admire her a great deal but she can't cool me off when I'm hot. Two, it is about the size of a family member, the kind of family member named Uncle Somebody who is not really an uncle but who shows up to all the family gatherings and eats twice his share and everybody's leftovers and has a big gut and makes a shitload of noise but everybody is fond of him anyway. Hal 3000, as we've dubbed our little R2-D2 unit (if R2-D2 had taken steroids) is a gargantuan hunk of machinery that takes up a quarter of the bedroom and makes so much noise that a bomb could go off on the street outside and we wouldn't hear it. And Hal also eats more than his share in that our electric bill has quadrupled.

But Hal's face has a soft, friendly blue glow that gently reminds us of why we love him: 64 degrees, he gently announces in his sweet, glowing way as we drift off to sleep, rocked in the cool breeze of Hal's love.

I don't regret the addition of Hal to our family one bit. Of course, I haven't gotten the bill for Hal yet. And by the time I do, it will be back to a pleasant 75 degrees and I'll come to my senses realizing we've spent roughly $200 for each day of the heat wave to keep me from complaining.

But that's okay; I've still got the wine to fall back on.

Seattle vs New York

Although I'm really, really loving Seattle I think I'm more of a New Yorker at heart. Maybe because I left the city before I'd burned out on it, I will always remember it as a magical time. That being said, at this point in my life I think Seattle is the perfect city for me. Seattle is like New York Lite - New York with half the stress. Here are a few differences I've noted so far:

Seattle bus drivers: "Good morning!"

New York bus drivers: "Are you getting on or what?"

Seattleites wear thongs to work - the kind that go on your feet.

New Yorkers wear thongs to work - the kind that ride up your butt.

New Yorkers like to go to good restaurants to see and been seen.

Seattleites like to go to good restaurants to eat food.

New York bums smell.

Seattle bums smell too.

Seattle is far more laid-back than New York but New York is like nowhere else. One of my favorite websites is www.overheardinny.com but I don't go there too often because it always makes me homesick. My all-time favorite overheard conversation:

Man on street: "Yo, where'd you get those pants?"

2nd Man on street: "Mother-fuckin' ebay, motherfucker!"

And one last note, officially making this a seriously random and blog-like entry: please check out the updated eyeoftheowl site. There have been some mind-blowing photos and graphics added. You'll see the link on the right-hand side of this page, under "blogrolls." And, no, I'm not biased. And, yes, I was completely nude in that photo.

The Moving Chronicles: Random Thoughts After a Day of Packing

Why is it you are so anxious to leave a place until it's time to leave and suddenly you realize how wonderful it is, and particularly how many lovely friends you have that you will not get to see very often anymore? That blows.

Appletinis+packing=lots of broken things.

Bubble pack is EXPENSIVE. When we get to the other end I think I will construct a bubble-pack couch. It will cost more than an actual couch but it will be much more cushiony. Handy feature: if you pop a bubble when you sit down, you know it's time to go on a diet. Or trim the dog's nails.

Yes, you can have too much stuff.

As many boxes as you think you need, triple that number.

Um... has anybody seen the dog lately?

Appletinis+blogging=very little sense.

Stay tuned for Episode III by which time I might be sober. I haven't decided yet. Depends on how far we get with the packing.