Indecisive Peach

As I bent to wash my hands in the sink at work the other day, I looked at the soap dispenser and thought that as a kid I probably used to be one of janitors worst nightmares in the restroom. I found, when I was about 9 or 10 and having delusions of grandeur regarding my epic rise as an ice skating star, that one of the best things to do in the restroom was to pump as much liquid soap on the floor as possible. Then you’d hang on the sides of two sinks and maniacally swish your legs in the goo and slide and slide and slide.

I think I had a good go at it then…and it’s a good thing too because thinking that I did makes me much less inclined to want to relive my youth when I eye the soap dispensers in the library restroom.

Mother of Mambo! Look at it in here - all smooth white and with a rather zen masthead.

I’ve been psyching myself up for a blog template change for a while since I noted that it seems that they’ve retired my old blog template to wherever it is old blog templates go to die. Thus, a changed in template was do or die; there was no return. And since I’ve been wanted to buff up my CSS and Photoshop skills/z (I’ve had custom CSS on my blog for a year), I figured I’d use my usual methodology for this - impulsive action.

[Cripes, a year. Sheesh.]  

I like it. Kinda. Everything still feels a bit garish and misplaced to me, but I also finally feel that I’ve gotten out of the obviously templated (not a word Google condones I see) blog action and moved toward the clearer, visually succinct blogs that I like so much.

[AKA A Big Girl Blog.]

But I don’t like my widgets on the left *breath* and there is a horrible lack of green tones *breath, breath* and it’s all funny strange *breath* and yet, bemusing *breath* like being backed up against a car for a kiss you’re unprepared for. *hyperventilates*

[Not that that's happen. *cough*]

I might have a slight twang of buyer’s remorse for template changing. On the positive flip side, this just means I’m now able to break the ties of The Past… at least in my blog layouts.

[Read: custom mastheads! Oooh, tingly.]

I guess I sat around looking a little too forlorn. The great big Bloggers got wind of this and instead of beating me for my lunch money, they took me under their wing. I got a comment from Neil, whose project this actually is at Citizen of the Month, informing me that since my original interviewer didn’t come through for me, they had some overachievers wandering around wringing their hands raw and wanting to do my interviews. I have few of these in my classes and since the best way to placate them is to give them more things to do, so I thought I’d oblige.

I was told to write Pam of Nerd’s Eye View. She totally has my life. She’s a freelance tech writer and travels and writes and travels and writes…then she does NPR gigs and writes about travel at  Blogher. Plus she’s got an Austrian husband and has jammies with garden gnomes. I’m tre jealous.

[And here's where you get a small blogging world story: I had actually sat with her in the same small session on podcasting at the Blogher conference.]

Pam did a great job, doing a couple of volleys of e-mails, whereas I wrote out ten direct questions to my interviewee and said, “Answer this.” I think her method was better.

The interview is here and after the jump.

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She had to be in the ballpark of about fifteen to seventeen. Bleached hair and a nose piercing, she had a good lathering of foundation to give her a bland hue only contrasted by the vibrant eyeshadow that shouldn’t see the light of day outside of a rave.

I handed her my ticket. She looked at me out of the corner of her eye, “Enjoy your meal today, Ma’am?”

It wasn’t the good Ma’am, the respectful salutation of status; no, it was the cold hard edge of ‘You’re old and I cannot relate to you’ Ma’am.

I gulped. “Fine.”

I remember the first time I called ma’am by an officious ID checker at the base commissary when I was about fourteen or fifteen. I knew that it was just a somewhat belittling, a mockry, but in the moment - in the moment - I felt it was right.

‘That’s darn right,’ I thought. ’Ma’am! The glory that awaits, the pooooower.’ I was then asked by Mom to grab a shopping cart.

As I slunk out with my ticket and followed J to his car, I mumbled to him, “Am I that old?”

He whipped out the standard answer of, “You’re fiiiine.” 

“But…but…Ma’am… Ma’am is my mother.” 

I own a few shirts of my father. Some were hand-me-downs, some were intentionally kept and tossed my way, and some were stolen.

One of my favorite shirts is one that I never can remember him actually wearing. I can’t know quite remember how I came by it - maybe I found in the back of the closet as a rummaged around in early high school, maybe my Mom pawned it off on my to clear space. Either way, as I pounced and slipped it on, hopping around giddily in front of my Dad, he just scrunched his face and said, “Oh, that one.” 

It’s like gauze, soft with age, striped in pastels, and has a collar and a pocket. Everything a girl, in my mind, needs. It’s perfect for hot summer days, enough to wear with a tank top, but enough to afford me a flowing shield against the contours of my body.  I have dozens of pictures of myself wearing it through the years.

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I showed this to J and waited for him to laugh.

“I don’t get it,” he said slowly.

I slowly read it out, waiting for him to catch it.

“I still…don’t understand. Is this a song?”

“It’s Prince.”

“Oh.”

“When Doves Cry?”

“I don’t think I’ve heard that one.”

I give my best imitation. He shrugs.

I look blankly at him, “What I want to know…”

“Yes?”

“Is how the hell did you survive the 90’s without hearing that song?”

I get on the phone with my aunt this afternoon where she tells me that she finally showed her boyfriend my site for the first time.

“Shoot, I’ve haven’t done anything with that in a week or so,” I mumble.

“Ja, da war nicht viel los,” she said dryly.

It’s true; there hasn’t been a lot going on here. I’ve seen the light at the end of the grad school tunnel, but it’s that light that I’m shielding my eyes from instead of typing. I’ve been spending the last two weeks working on this beast of a reflective portfolio, dissecting what it all Means, and how you Feel, and how you can Connect between Theory and Reality. And I’m Getting Tired Of The Importance Of It All. So, the thought of coming here to give out more slices of my life in my life would have probably drowned me mentally.

In addition, I’ve had an influx of hormones the last week, reaching a crescendo late Friday night and petering out on Sunday morning. I felt as if I were stumbling around in a thick fog, head rearing backward, clutching my heart with one hand, waving my other arm into damp air and accumulating liquid in my lungs which made every breath rattle.

This, translated into reality, meant that I sit listlessly on the couch staring at the television. But if we ever actually did get preciptiation here, I’d be first in line for such a dramatic enacting of that imagery.

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Nothing like going to the video store on a Saturday afternoon with its glowing couples to make you right as rain. Overhead:

Male, touching lightly the small of his girlfriend’s back, “I don’t want to watch a horror movie.”

“What are you talking about; it’s a comedy,” says the girlfriend.

“Knocked Up seems too much like a horror movie to me.”

…or as I like to call it around these here parts, my “I’m not dead. Yet.” posts.

If I should die before I wake I’ll tell you in a memo, but if I should wake before I die I’ll turn off the alarm clock.

- Robert Metrick, “The Calendar Song”