2001-06-20 - 6:59 p.m.

On the internal soundtrack: Nameless song from classic-rock radio

Good lord, I'm cranky right now. I don't know why, really. Maybe because I feel like I have three million things to do. I have to wrap my digital camera to return for repairs (I forgot all about it in the whole Pop-Pop/flood thing). I have to wrap the nieces' half-birthday presents (since their birthdays are so close to Christmas, I give them checks in December and fun stuff in June). I have to take the packages to the post office, which is not open at convenient hours. I have to do the dishes. I have to do my cold-wash drip-dry laundry. I have to work some more. And I don't want to do any of it.

What the hell is wrong with me? Maybe I really do need a vacation.

Lately I've been entertaining the notion of taking a month off from work, in which I would be available to do any work people needed me to do (specific deadlined requests), but I would not be doing any of the vague, non-deadlined research type work that I have no motivation whatsoever to do these days. Something to think about. I love doing work when a client calls and wants an answer by the end of the day, but the open-ended stuff is getting to me lately.

Or maybe I just need to whup my ass and start making deadlines for myself. Hard to tell. I guess I'll see how I feel after a week in Florida.

Discussing this with Poindexter, I discovered that half my problem is that I am doing a lot of presents shopping lately. For children. Which means the shopping is really for the parents, since the children are too young to notice.

I hate shopping of any kind, except grocery shopping. I especially hate shopping for required presents, like for the parents' days and birthdays and even Christmas. Sometimes I am in the store, and I see something I know someone would like, and I buy it without hesitation. Saturday presents, I call it. That's fine. But when it's somebody's birthday or somebody just had a baby and I'm wandering around the goddamn store looking for something that's age-appropriate and trying to figure out if they'll like it, it makes me INSANE. I HATE it.

Poindexter thinks we should just stick with checks and cards. Then I feel guilty, since that's like a lazy cop-out. But on the other hand, I don't want anybody giving me presents (OR checks, for that matter), so it's not like I'm being hypocritical here.

The presents for the nieces, btw, are Rose Prince and Rose Princess Barbie, gag. This is what their mother says they are hankering after, so I got 'em.

Did I mention I hate Barbie?

I do, however, enjoy Rose Prince Ken. I like him far better than the girly-girl pinky blonde Barbie. Any man who wears billowy satiny royal purple is a man I can like. I guess I like people who push the gender envelope, or at least those who aren't slaves to other people's preconceived notions of how a gender should be.

Anyway, each niece gets a pair, since they apparently don't share and they both want the same thing.

The area I live in is racially diverse. You can tell not only by looking around, but by looking at the products available in stores. They're marketing to the different ethnicities.

So, I wasn't terribly surprised when I went to the nearby toy store and found that they were out of white Prince Rose Kens. They had only black ones. They had several white Princess Rose Barbies, so I got those.

Me being me, I entertained (not seriously) the idea of giving them interracial sets. White Rose Princess, Black Rose Prince. A colorblind couple for the new millennium. But I figured that would upset the kiddies. Not because they have any weird notions about race yet, but because the colors wouldn't match (the dolls don't match each other, and Ken doesn't match the nieces).

It would have been interesting to know how they'd react, though. They'd probably just think I was too stupid to know that white Barbie needs a white Ken.

I still don't feel like recording my weekend, so I've got a lot of unrelated nonsense again.

I will say, however, that I am digging the squiggly hair. I kept trying to learn to love my straight hair, but it just wasn't happening. Now I have squiggly, no-maintenance hair that loves humidity, and I am a happy gal. Poindexter likes it, too, so it's all good.

Why, when people age to the point of being "frail elderly", do they seem to become more child-like?

Thinking about the older folks I've known, two things come to mind: helplessness and irrationality.

Helplessness is obvious. When people become frail physically, they need more help. Mom's mom couldn't walk without help. Due to arthritis and muscle atrophy from lack of use, plus weakness, their movements in everyday tasks become clumsy and somewhat uncontrolled. There's a depressing similarity between a very frail old person and a toddler trying to unwrap a present or get a fork from plate to mouth.

How frustrating must that be? To have been healthy and capable all your life and then have your body suddenly useless? My grandfather often spoke of losing his independence -- it was something that he really hated, I think. I am only glad that he didn't have to be dependent for long.

The irrationality is another factor. Sometimes older folks become nearly impossible to reason with. They get an idea in their head no amount of explaining can get them to consider another point of view. Sometimes they get worked up emotionally over small things and you can't get them to calm down by reasoning thing out, as you might with an adult.

One other parallel between old folks and children is the desire for a structured schedule. I'm sure there are exceptions, but most of the older folks I've known are religious about their schedules -- they wake up, eat, sleep, etc. at the same times every day. They're quite adamant about keeping to the schedule, too -- if they are not waiting outside the dining room by half an hour before dinner is served, they can get rather agitated.

Maybe it has something to do with the helplessness. When you're not so good at fending for yourself anymore, you want to keep things small and manageable, and it can be stressful when they're not. I know how that can be.

There's something else, though. I think maybe it's a kind of honesty and openness about emotions. Somewhere along the way, older folks lose the "stiff upper lip" that most of us have, generally, and start to show their emotions more readily. Especially the happy ones. They take delight in small things the way younger adults don't.

I wonder why that is.

Ever hear somebody say that kids are honest? And then someone else will point out that kids lie all the time? It's not a truth-telling kind of honest that they mean. Kids just don't have the wiles to hide what they're feeling, and it shows in their face and body language plain as day. I like that about children, and I like it about older folks, too.

This next section may be TMI for some of you. Skip ahead if necessary.

So, the other day I was wearing a wrap skirt that went down to my ankles. Hides my waiting-to-be-waxed legs, but it's cooler (temperature-wise) than pants. And I got to thinking.

What if I went out in sexy cutoffs and a tight shirt, but with my hairy legs on display? What would happen? D'ya think people would have a word with me about it, or just point and stare?

This is an amazingly prevalent thing in American culture. Chicks with hairy legs is A Bad Thing, and almost none of them pass on shaving. There are some who do, of course, concentrated in places like Oberlin and Santa Cruz County. I've heard that women with darker skin often don't bother, but it's harder for me to observe in this instance without getting inappropriately close to the subject. But otherwise, you never, ever see a girl with unshaved, hairy legs prancing around in shorts. There is the occasional blond with very sparse hair who doesn't bother, and I hate her, but women with non-blond hair usually use some method of hair removal.

I asked Poindexter what would happen if I wore shorts out shopping right now, and he replied: "I think they haul you off in handcuffs. Then, you're sedated and covered in Nair. Then, they release you back into the wild."

I asked him if he'd be willing to come with me while I tried the Hairy-Legs-in-Public Experiment, and he said only if he stayed ten feet away.

I think I'm too chicken to do it. Maybe if somebody gave me some money.

Speaking of doing things for money, did you watch "Fear Factor" the other night?

I was very, very disappointed in that girl. She used some flimsy excuse about how seven years of vegetarianism would mean that she'd puke from eating the worm. I'm not buying it. One little bitty worm? Vegetarians can eat a hamburger and it just makes them feel terrible, but not necessarily throw up. She was just too chicken.

If I really needed or wanted that $50,000, you bet your ass I'd eat a worm. I'd chew it really, really fast, but I'd eat it. And after that, lying in a coffin full of worms really wouldn't seem so bad.

This morning around 10:30 I took "Tommy Boy" to the post office (we have Netflix).

Tommy and another of Poindexter's coworkers insisted that we watch it, saying that it was hilarious.

Uh, no. There was exactly one funny moment: The "whores" bit. The rest was a lot of sitting around waiting for it to get funny.

But I digress. I was walking to the post office. And the sun was beating on me, and I was sweaty, and I did not like it.

I'm beginning to think there's some truth to what Tommy said about us when he visited. He said we were vampires. We're deathly pale, stay inside all day as much as possible, wear sunglasses every time we go outdoors, etc.

I seem to have a sort of aversion to direct sunlight. It started in high school when I was getting headaches all the time, and I finally discovered that it was because of squinting in bright sunlight. Hence the ubiquitous sunglasses. Then I started exercising more, and exercise is unpleasant in hot sunlight (makes my chest hurt). So I exercise at dusk or after dark.

Next thing you know I'll be giving up the Pop-Tarts in favor of killing small animals for their blood.

previous index next