Last sign post in sight

It snowed today.

Then came the sunshine. Then came the snow. Then came the sun and the snow and the sun and the snow until darkness fell while moisture sleeted.

So April ends and May begins.

13 years ago I was 17, a soon to be high school graduate with a plan.

Lord but I was young. Young, ignorant, naïve, certain I knew who I was. Shy. Terrified. Stupidly brave.

Now I am 30. A soon to be graduate of a Masters program at a respected University.

Still young…but old. Much more aware of my ignorance. My naivety has soured into distrust and suspicion. I have little idea of who I am-or should I say, who I was has splintered and I still am trying to repair all the pieces. Introverted. Terrified. Exhausted. Brave? No, but I hope determined.

13 years ago, I had a plan. In 18 days, that plan will be fulfilled.

Who was that 17 year old child, that her resolve has propelled me to this end? Amazing. How did she do that?

At 18 a Drill Sergeant roared her into the Universe of soldiers. The ‘coming of’ age, the 21^st year, was mostly spent at war. In dust, heat, unacknowledged fear, and a meeting and shattering of self. 24 was a launch back into civiliondom…a strange world. Strange and frightening and frustrating. Then came 26 and the entry into higher learning. And a shock as people who shared an age, but few similar experiences, surrounded her. Me. Us?   

13 years ago, I had a plan. Now? Now I am tired. Marrow bone weary. I am 30…looking forward to being done. And that should not be so. I am not even half-way there.

13 years ago, I saw a road, I planned a journey with no rest stops. And now I do not know how to find the exits.

It snowed today and the cold seeped through my skin to the blood and muscle. It snowed and the creak in my knees reminded me of the abuse I had heaped upon them. Of the miles run. Of the weight of armor.

It snowed today and I do not feel 30. There is too much bruising and shredded spirit to call this 30.

23. The number 23 is the latest statistic. The latest and greatest number of daily deaths. Self-inflicted death- brothers, sisters, soldiers. Every day. I bet they didn’t feel young. I can guarantee it. I wonder how many were 30. I wonder how many didn’t make it to 30. I wonder if they felt snowed in when it was, in all actuality, Spring.

Everyone, family, co-workers, friends, peers, professors- all, all of them; they say I am strong. And I wonder at that. Because I know no strength, but only a brittleness from the cold.

not ogle equal

A couple years back…wait a second. More than a couple years! How the time does fly. Anyway, some years ago, I was in the middle of a move from one town to another and asked for help from my family. They had never actually been to my house (it was quite a ways away in a tiny little town so I usually visited them) and they needed directions. Since my Dad and brother were house painters, I had the bright idea of giving directions by the landmark of a house that desperately needed painting. It was chipped and faded, but peering beyond the dilapidation, one could decipher its former color.

It totally made sense when I thought it through. Both those guys were always making derogatory comments about houses in need of paint protection. So of course I thought it wouldn’t be problematic. I said to “Turn left after the house that used to be pink.”

Well I gave directions to my mother who passed them on to the fellas in route resulting in my brother nearly having a coronary. I really wish he had been recorded. His rants are rather hilarious…even if I am at the brunt end.

“USED to be pink! How am I supposed to know which house USED to be pink! What color is it NOW!” You get the drift.

Why mention this? No real good reason other than I need to be working on stuff so I can graduate but don’t wanna. Instead I wanna blog except nothing more interesting than a tiny event today is stirring in my “topics to blog about” area of the brain.

I is tired.

My Dad sent off a text to me today about passing the house that “used to be pink”, surprising me since that town is far off Pop’s usual trail. After inquiry, he said there was a choice job to bid, a house of some movie star. (Small town, true, but in a beautiful place.) Instead of asking, like any sane, gossip minded person would, about which movie star…I reminded him to charge for the gas he’d be using in transit as part of the bid. Now it’s past midnight and it randomly occurred to me that I don’t know whose house and it’s bugging me this time. Dammit. Why is it bugging me? It never has before. What a bother.

What should be bothering me is the vision of Dad texting and driving.

Bad Daughter!!!

On a wholly separate note, it was warm today. Warm and sunny and beautiful. So I ditched responsibilities and took in a Vitamin D enriched walk. And was promptly reminded of other reasons why I love the sun.

You know what the sun does? It makes things hot.

You know what gets hot? Hawt guys.

More specifically, hawt guys working out who choose to lose their shirts.

God bless ‘em.

So, I shall close this meandering entry with an open letter of appreciation to all hawt shirtless dudes. And specifically to one in particular sighted today.

Hawt shirtless dude,

   Thank you.

Thank you for choosing to care for your physical body in a manner which can be visually appreciated by others.

Thank you for choosing to perform lunges for the full 200 yards it took for me to catch up with you and then choosing, at the precise perfect moment, to find the need to stretch out them legs and gluteus…by using the time tested “bend over” technique. I will freely inform you that all those lunges are working. Very nicely.

Thank you for demonstrating why living in a Paternalistic culture is not all bad since it is acceptable for guys to go shirtless, but not so much we ladies (cuz that would just be uncomfortable). And also choosing to take advantage of the shirtless choice.

Thank you for choosing to give those abs some sun in an appropriate place where it’s expected instead of someplace where it is just awkward. Like the farmer’s market. Or the gas station.

But most of all, thank you (though I know it wasn’t your choice) for that moment when I was nearly crowded into you by a passing bicyclist, when your passing glance was easily misinterpreted by me as a once over. Cause that bit of fiction has made my day.  

Most of all, thank you for reminding me why summer is just so freaking awesome! Beautiful half-naked boys…men…males. Makes me feel a little sad for the dudes and lesbians out there. This is not an ogle equal culture.

Leetle bit of anger

So I went to a concert. A concert of one of my favorite bands!!!! Excitement extraordinaire!

You ever go to a music event and expect awesome and get awesome of an entirely different flavor?

I mean, I know this band’s music. I can sing along to most of their songs and I mean the verses, not just the chorus. I expected to hear a live, more amazing version of the album. What I got was…uh, not that.

First of all, I hadn’t realized I was listening to a band who attracted such a young audience. A whole lot of high schoolers showed up making me feel alternately hip and out of place (and sometimes downright old. Do the mothers know what their daughters are not wearing in public?) Second of all, a couple rows of the seats had been cleared out to create a mosh pit. I had never thought of this band (AWOL Nation) as a mosh pit band.

Apparently they are.

Made more apparent by how they play live. It was like watching the 90’s come back to life. Like a self-aware tribute to Kurt Cobain. Head banging, crowd surfing and (sadly) some screwed up sound system errors where all the words were indecipherable.

Lucky I knew all the lyrics.

And the grunge added to their playing style was rather notable.

And yet…despite all the above mentioned peculiarities, it was still amazing. And I still love ‘em. Maybe even more for knowing how strange they are live.

Plus one of the dudes wore my State’s t-shirt.

What was really fun, was the crowd/people watching…apart from the sluttily dressed children that is. This town is odd. Weird. Strange, and human watching could be a full time hobby. The dreadlocks hanging out next to the fu-manchus. The sleeves of tattoos next to the polo shirts. The flanneled drug dealer bumping elbows with guy-dressed-like-a-pirate (and not the Johnny Depp pirate, more elegant, more Captain Hook. Actually, that dude was cool…until he started chasing the slutty children. So yeah, more Captain Hook.)

Of course, this being a horticulturally friendly town, the evening was not complete until someone lit up a bong. Don’t get me wrong, there had been plenty enough smoke going up already. Enough to make me feel a bit ill…I hate that smell. But then the bong was lit and even the band tracked the event in staring disbelief. Because when I say lit, I mean it was glow in the dark purple, light up the theater bright.

Event staff shut it down pretty quick since it was distracting everyone in the entire room from looking at the band.

I do not respond well to marijuana. My body does not like it and I’ve a rather low tolerance. All the next day I was sick, groggy and stupid.

So here is my rant against pot.

Wait, I take that back. Here is my rant against pot smokers. Or, because I am really pissed, fucking public pot smokers!!!!!

It reeks. I mean stink like the unwashed backside of a dead skunk’s scent glands. But because, apparently, it is “all good, all fun, peace maaaaan” it’s ok to shove that stench down the throat of anyone within a 50 yard radius. Not to mention the headache, stomach cramps, and sluggish body it could give the unwilling bystander.

Selfish bastards!

Fucktards!

Does pot have its medical uses? Yup, no argument. Is it as harmful and terrible as our society paints it? Nope, absolutely not. Does that mean that idiots should have the right to pollute public air with it? No.

If I spend my money to go see the concert of a band I love, I don’t want my experience to end in nausea because some selfish, unthinking a-hole doesn’t know how to have fun without lighting a joint.

Snarl.

Growl.

Snap.

You want to convince me to legalize it? Grow some manners along with that THC garden. Till then? Bugger off.

The etymology of people being assholes

So I had a conversation with one of my awesome sauce Grad School class mates the other day. She’s cool and is especially handy in offering insight into the societal privilege of being white. I’m white and grew up happily in a small town, oblivious to racism and quite convinced that it was a thing of the past.

Since my childhood, I’ve gotten more aware, but am always learning fun new facts. For instance, she was visiting my home town the other day and felt genuinely frightened at one point because she is not white. She’s a Native. In my home town she was scared. And she had her kids with her.

Now I love my town and I love my State but we are, as a whole, rather racist, and also in a whole lot of denial over it. “After all,” (I’ve heard as a common sentiment) “we don’t really have a lot of black people, we can’t be racist!” Holy crap.

But people hating on other people is nothing new. Hardly. We humans like to repeat our indecencies. Slavery dates so far back that the first known ‘civilization’ of Egypt had ‘em in spades. Fast forward a few millennia and Rome had so many slaves that their politicians vetoed the idea of having all slaves wear uniforms so that slaves wouldn’t be able to identify each other, realize their numbers, and revolt. Because gods forfend there was a repeat of the Spartacus disaster.

Fast forward even further and you get examples of people hurting people without even using the excuse of “But they’re only property!” WWII gave a nice sample here in the States as we rounded up American citizens whose grandparent’s, parents had been from Japan and were labeled a threat. Oh proud moment!

The famed concentration camps in Germany have yet to go out of style, since their ugly cousins have cropped up in North Korea. These cheerful places have decided to provide housing for entire families, for life, when one’s second cousins, wife’s, brother’s in-laws speak out of turn about the government. Yup, entire families, gathered together forever, because Uncle Jung complained about food shortages. I do wonder, do the children of the children sent to live there get to ever leave? Or is it a forever generational thing? Or maybe that is a moot point since no one is healthy enough to reproduce.

Now there is a horrific fear to live under. “I’m hungry,” thinks you. “Hungry and really want to live. And healthy enough that I think I could make a run across the border. BUT, if I do, my entire family will be thrown into a death camp. Hmmm, choices.”

Ah the evolution of the ingenuity of the cruelty of man. North Korea swiped Hitler’s idea, those clever thieves. And Hitler nabbed it from…wait, what’s this? The U.S.? Nooooo, that can’t be right. Oh wait, it is. Those darned Nazis! Stealing all our ideas! Can’t they think for themselves that they had to pattern their concentration camps off of U.S. Indian Reservations? And they claim the Aryan race to be superior. Pfft! (See how I came full circle there?)

But no, we have no racism, no generational oppression here. Everything is fine. Everything is just perfect.