Do you ever

just feel like you suck?

Gym + TV

I used to think this was disgusting. I mean TV is about being sloth-like and mind-numbing. But last night I worked that treadmill for an extra 30-40 minutes because I was so caught up in flipping between Project Runway and the presidential debates.

I guess we all want to see who the winner is.

Steady Work?

It’s been a year since I moved to Oakland and although I love it, I’m so tired of looking for work. Do you know how many W-2’s I’m going to have when I fill out my taxes next year?

I went to a job fair yesterday for a teaching position. I don’t have my credential yet – am paying to get it because that’s basically how you get credentialed – you throw some money at the state government. Anyway, I was under the impression that I could apply for the job while I waited for the application to go through. Nope.

I was kind of led on and now I’m kind of annoyed. Still waiting to get my credential and when I do, then I’ll send in my application

In the meantime…I’m trying to think of things I can sell to bring in some cash.

I love Kim Chee

I have always loved Kim Chee. Spicy, garlic, pungent. My CSA box has been sending me Napa Cabbage. It’s crazy big and not much else to do with it but stir fry as far as I know. I thought about making Kim Chee but have always intimidated. Then I mentioned in my ESl class that I love Kim Chee. The next day, a student brings me some. Today she told me the recipe. It sounded so easy, no measuring of course – but I figured I could handle it. It needs a few days to ferment. I’ll let you know how it goes. So far, it’s a little salty!

I thought I’d add this poem that I wrote. Completely unrelated to my recent culinary adventures…

The Warriors of Spring

Connie always wore
Her swimsuit over panties
White, dotted with tiny flowers
Bulging underneath lycra
And out through leg holes

I never understood why
But never asked
Because asking is telling

I told myself that she already knew
And I liked going to her house
Having her teach me scales on the piano
While her mother made Kim Chee

I was nine when I learned
I can rescue you if you get hurt
In the water
I know how to hold you and swim you to shore
And I can save myself
By letting go

Simply drift and wait

I was out sick the day school tested our survival skills. The following week I floated, deserted, for an hour in a roped off part of the pool. I would have been easily spotted from above, dark hair snaking in warm aqua water while the others jumped and screamed and splashed five feet away.

As I hovered over the deep end
I thought about Connie
Uncomfortable in thick
Cotton soaked underwear
Then I imagined myself
In the middle of the ocean

All alone
Hoping

I swim now, twenty-some years later
With more or less fear
I can’t tell

Being weightless
Reminds me of childhood
I let the blue and white tiled path
Lead me to the other side
Then back again
As though I need to be guided
Still
Chlorinated chest high water

Connie cried
When two boys saw
Her sitting on the toilet
In the church bathroom
One held the other up
To peer over the stall

It doesn’t matter
What could they have seen?
I said

But it didn’t matter
What
I said

If you find yourself stranded at sea with no boat and no life vest, remain calm. Hold your arms out in the shape of a U with your face under water. Lift your head only when you need to breathe.

I wish

I felt like this right now.

green with ?

sometimes i leave the house and i am dressed entirely in green. i even have green shoes and a green jacket…what can this mean?

adult confessions, the series is back

I bought a tank top a few years ago. It’s very a ‘camp’ astrological graphic. It has two fishes with long eyelashes, purple hair and sparkles – it says, “Pisces, Sensitive Girl. I was born on March 20th – the cusp between Pisces and Aries and in every magazine, newspaper, and postcard 3/20 is Pisces.

In college, I was hanging out with a close friend who bought a huge astrological manual. He decided to look up my info and found that on the year I was born – 3/20 peeps were Aries. I was kind of in shock, having been a sensitive girl my whole life. We debated over it and found a section that allowed one to be a Pisces with Aries tendencies. I reluctantly accepted this, had a silent personality crisis and later denied that it ever happened.

Until last year. When the same friend got me an astrological reading for my birthday. The woman read my chart and said, you’re an Aries. I said, no, I’m a Pisces. To which she replied, Girl, you don’t want to be a Pisces. It’s time for you to be an Aries.

I couldn’t deny it. I’ve been living a passive, sensitive, mysterious life for too long. It’s time for me to take charge, exude confidence, but heads or whatever it is that rams do.

But I haven’t really told anyone. So now I’m telling everyone. I’m an Aries – hear me but heads. The BF suggested that I get a tank that says, Aries, bitch.

Road Rage, My Bad

I learned a valuable lesson today, folks. Actually, I should have learned this long ago and even not so long ago. Let me explain…

I live very close to a freeway exit which is awesome and not. One of the problems is that 4-5 lanes merge when I need to get over to the exit only lane. It’s dangerous and even more so at rush hour. So I’m driving home in rush hour after just doing a reading of my work to an audience at school. Nerves were ripe.

I got almost all the way to the right without getting hit and there’s this dude who won’t let me into the exit only lane that I need to be into so I can go home. So, I flipped him off and yelled. He saw me and then I realized that he wasn’t trying to keep me out of the lane – he didn’t even see me because he was talking on the phone. I continued to struggle to get over and ended up in front of him. I knew this wasn’t a gracious act on his part and thought, oh bugger.

When we exited, I pulled into a different lane and he pulled behind me. His high beams were on and he was following close. I drove by my house because, as I said, I learned that lesson. I quickly pulled into a left hand turn lane hoping he would continue straight ahead. He pulled behind me. I was at a stop. I locked my door.

He got out of the car and came to my window. It struck me as amusing that he had his cel phone in hand. This was our exchange:

“What’s your problem?”

“You shouldn’t drive while you are on the phone.”

“What’s your problem?”

“You shouldn’t drive while you are on the phone.”

And then he walked back to his car. We both turned and after a moments pause he drove away from me. I doubled back and went home.

Did he think I was crazy and flipping him off for no reason? Did he have anger management problems? Do I?

All I can do is give this advice. If you are driving home in rush hour in your fancy convertible car with the special ‘art’ license plate don’t flip off the guy on the phone in the beat up mini van who, it turns out, works for Fed Ex or at least was wearing one of their T-shirts. I hope he’s not a Fed Ex driver.

And I promise to stop flipping people off. I promise. I promise. I promise. I’ll pretend to do it in my head instead.

Blood

I used to have a fear of vampires, blood sucking, soulless creatures of the night. I’m not sure when it began but I am sure I was quite young and watched a movie that if I had had more observant parents, they would not have let me see. I had nightmares as a child of vampires chasing me, cornering me in my bedroom and attacking.

It’s been a phobia that I’ve kept to myself most of my life after getting reactions like, do you think vampires are real? And then I saw some. In Boulder, Colorado. They were a pack of about 10 walking towards me. They seemed odd, out of place. They wore dark clothes of leather and ripped blue jeans and they were a range of ages – from 40’s to a young teenager.

I was scared but didn’t want to make it obvious by crossing to the other side of the street. So I continued to face my nightmare. I looked straight ahead as they surrounded and then passed by me. One of them laughed, a full laugh and swung his head back with his mouth open wide. He had fangs.

Later a Goth friend told me that there are people who actually want to be vampires and they get some kind of cosmetic surgery done to have fangs. This would explain why my demons were walking around in broad daylight, a big no-no for real vampires.
What I feared most about vampires was not that they would suck my blood and kill me (unless, of course, they wanted me to join them for eternity), but rather that they could have complete control over their victims. Not once in all those movies did I see anyone resist the seductive and manipulative mind control. The vamps always got people to let them in the house.

As I’ve grown older I fear real death more than that of the living dead. But I think the issues are the same. I don’t know if I will ever be able to accept that life, my life or anyone else’s, is out of our control.

missing garbage can oakland

That was the internet search I did yesterday.

You see someone, and we know who – the man who takes cans out of our recycling bin, and we know why – a few days earlier his container broke and he left a pile of broken bottles, a thin pair of red pants and a t-shirt in the street in front of our place…he took our small garbage can and put his things inside of it.

As thrilled as we were that he got his stuff, lack of garbage can was not cool. I called the landlord and heard nothing back and last night was garbage night. I wasn’t sure what to do but I did want the chicken carcass that was in the garage out of the garage. So, I tried to find instructions on how to dump your trash sans bin.

I searched ‘missing garbage can oakland’. Any guesses on what came up? How about a hint – they had nothing to do with helping me empty the trash… Ok, I’ll tell you.

Articles about missing bodies found in garbage cans. Thankfully none were about Oakland, but still. This dumping of the human body into a trash bin freaks me out as much as the thought of the murder. People are f-ed up.