Thanks and Stuff

I won't be posting anything tomorrow because I will be eating. When I stop eating, I'll start eating. After that, I'll probably go someplace to eat. Eating might follow that but it's a pretty loose plan so you never know what I could do. Hell, I could actually end up eating.

Because I'll be very busy tomorrow, I'm going to post something about Thanksgiving today. Specifically, I'm going to copy and paste an article I wrote earlier this week. It will free up my time so I can eat some more.

Belated Thanks

The summer after I graduated from high school, I worked in my mother's office to earn money for my freshman year of college.

We went to lunch together quite a bit, frequenting this a la carte Mexican restaurant near the office. "I know that when you leave, you're never going to live here again," she said one day. Chomping on a burrito larger than my head, I was at a loss for words.

Us last year before I performed Poison's "Talk Dirty to Me" at karaoke night and reminded her why she's glad we live far, far away from each other. (It's the embarrassment, if you're wondering. All the embarrassment.) 

I knew she was right. Since I was a child, I've been dreaming of the future. Specifically, I've been dreaming of a future far away from Texarkana, where most of my immediate family lives. Even in high school, I knew I wanted to be independent as soon as I could be. I wanted to move off. I wanted to make a living writing. I wanted to control my finances and personal choices as much as I could without interference from my family.

Today, I get paid to write and I live almost six hours away from my mother. After all that wishing and ruminating on the future, I have accomplished nearly everything I wanted to accomplish at this point in my life. This year will  be my first Thanksgiving as a mostly independent career woman - which I will be spending with my boyfriend's family in Fayetteville. Five years ago, I probably would have celebrated this moment with too much wine just because I could.

But now that I have everything I always wanted, I really hate that I have to go months at a time without seeing my mom and nana. I miss them so very much, and the thought of spending a holiday without them saddens me more than I could express in words and more than I ever thought it would.

This year, I won't get to eat my nana's special dressing, featuring celery and onions ground up so finely that you wouldn't even know they were in there. I hated celery and onions as a child - today, I have learned to tolerate them - and my nana altered her dressing recipe to fool me into eating it. She also made me a separate banana pudding sans banana, which is really just hot vanilla pudding and wafer cookies. She spoiled me and I'm not sure if I'm ready to live in a world where people expect me to eat your run-of-the-mill dressing and banana pudding.

Aside from that, I miss the camaraderie. I've come to understand - and even share - my mother's sense of humor and sense of responsibility over the past few years. In high school, I thought she was being judgmental when she criticized me for wearing a too-short skirt or for being more crass than I should have been. Now, I know she was just trying to prepare me for a world hyper-focused on first impressions and appearances. It often felt like she was trying to hold me back, but I know now that she was doing her best to help me achieve the professional success I always talked about.

It's really painful to realize all my mother has done to help me now that I can't see her every day. I miss our dinners. I miss our late night television binges. I even miss waking up super early on Saturdays to go window shopping and grab brunch.

Still, I'm very lucky to have the support I do from my mother. I may not be able to see her this Thanksgiving, but I am more thankful for her help and love than anything else. Yes, even more than my career and the independence I always longed for. After all, she's the reason I have everything I do.

This year, I'm more thankful than I've ever been. My heart is filled with love - love for my family, for my boyfriend's family and for all the friends I keep close despite the distance between us. I love my career, too, but I'm realizing that it will always take a back seat to the people who constantly enrich my life. More importantly, I'm realizing that this is the way it should be. And, yes, I'm very thankful for that.

Be My (Cat) Baby

Before I write anything, I'd like to pat myself on the back for referencing the wonderful Ronettes song "Be My Baby" in the title of this post. I've enjoyed that song since I first saw Dirty Dancing as a child; this was, coincidentally, the same moment that I decided I would marry Swayze when I grew up. I carried the song to my adolescence and then to college, where my friend Kelby and I spent a large amount of time driving around and singing it at the top of our lungs. We changed the lyrics to "be my babo" after one of my more illiterate Facebook friends continually - and hilariously - misspelled the word in this way.

That has nothing to do with this post, but it did give me a really exaggerated period of time to congratulate myself on how clever I am.

The actual post is about how I do something all cat owners do - or at least I hope all cat owners do - to my beloved Kiki. (Kiki is slang for "kitty," which is what my mother and I call BJ when we're trying to get his attention and he's too busy camping out behind the Christmas tree searching for spare ornaments to kick around the house to respond to his given name.) I transform him from a vicious land-dwelling predator - he really does slay those catnip mice - to dependent, swaddled Cat Baby. If you don't know how to do this, don't worry. It's super easy. Here, in five steps, is how to annoy and comfort your cat at the same time! This is a real 2-in-1 deal, folks. You don't want to miss it.

The final product

1. Locate a blanket. I suggest a heating blanket, since cats love heat.
2. Lay that blanket out in front of you as if preparing for a lover or, as I've experienced more often, the $10 box from Pizza Hut. (Scoff if you will, but it is very important to avoid spilling pizza crumbs all over your bed as you lazily ingest 3,000 calories in the same place you will soon pass out from all the binge eating. Placing a blanket down first really helps with clean-up when you wake up at 3 a.m. with no memory of eating an entire medium pizza and one order each of breadsticks and cinnasticks all by your lonesome.) 
3. Sweet talk your cat into jumping onto the bed with you. BJ generally runs over when I say, "Come here, Kiki. Let's re-watch that video of the Hoff drunkenly eating a cheeseburger." Of course, you'll have to determine what works on your cat. Few cats enjoy hearing David Hasselhoff slur as much as BJ does. 
4. Hold your cat and rub his ears in such a way that he doesn't know what is about to happen to him. 
5. Place the cat on the blanket and quickly wrap him up. After this, swaddle him and watch as his soul slowly deteriorates. 

If you don't get it right the first time, just remember that famous Abraham Lincoln quote: "Giving up is for the Confederacy." Yes, I'm sure that applies to this blog post, just like I'm sure he said that at one point in his life. 

My Obsessions

The last time I visited my mom, I mentioned recently re-watching the biopic Selena. My mother scoffed, rolled her eyes and looked at Gideon. "She made me watch that movie more times than I can count," she told him. "You should be really thankful you weren't around for the Lost years." The Lost years she was referring to are not a period of time none of us can recall or prefer to ignore - well, at least not me - but the six years that Lost aired and I fawned over it any given opportunity. 

She is the only person I've ever idolized who can rock a bejeweled bra.

If you haven't realized it by now, I have many obsessions. Selena Quintanilla of Selena y Los Dinos and Lost are only two of these obsessions, though they are quite important to me. I became obsessed with Selena after I saw the biopic in 1997. For those of you who don't know about Selena Quintanilla, she was a famous Tejano superstar who was gunned down by her awful fan club manager at the age of 23. Jennifer Lopez starred in the biopic about Selena's life and death, a film I watched every time it was on television as a child. Apparently, this ruined it for my mother.

The last time I watched it was about seven months ago during my last semester of college. My friend Kelby and I had been drinking and decided to wind down with some TV. Scrolling through the channels, I saw that Selena was on and drunkenly started crying. "I hate that Selena had to die for J. Lo to get famous," I cried. Then, I voiced hope that the film's ending might have changed from the last time I saw it.

It didn't. I'm not sure why I'm so obsessed with Selena. It could be that she seemed so nice and down to earth. And she was so beautiful and talented. I still get kind of upset when I think about her even though I wasn't even four years old when she was killed. 

And then, of course, there's the Lost obsession. Lost, the television show I adore so much that I wrote re-caps on my old blog during its final season, helped me come to terms with all the pain I struggled with as a teenager. The show debuted in 2004, just two months after my grandfather killed himself. I was a kid searching for meaning after feeling like all meaning and worth had been ripped away from me. I didn't have faith in very much at the time; I was never super religious, but my grandfather's death really put the nail in that coffin. (Or, you know, the lid on that urn. I'm not very fond of the idea of being buried unless I die rich. In that case, I want to be buried with all my diamonds and DVDs.) 

One of the biggest themes of Lost is having faith in others, and I really needed to see that after losing the man I had loved like a father. When someone you love kills him/herself, it's very easy to feel as if you've been betrayed. I knew my grandfather was struggling with cancer and wanted to alleviate his pain, but I still felt betrayed by him for years. So while my obsession with Lost seems over-the-top and hokey, I know in my heart that I needed it to recover. 

A lot of people seem to think my love of Lost is a personality quirk, like my affinity for tight pants and yellow cats. I'm not easily offended but it does bother me when people assume this. Lost meant - and still means - a lot to me. It helped me figure out how to keep going amidst all the tragedy I experienced. It's not really a topic I take lightly even though I "joke" about it when people criticize it. 

I have a sense of humor - a pretty good sense of humor, I think - but some things are sacred to me. Yes, I know it's just a TV show. But that doesn't mean it isn't a source of faith. That doesn't mean it isn't important to me. I'm quick to defend it because it helped me re-discover so much good. Sawyer's development from a wounded con man to a kind leader was extraordinary and reaffirming, just like Jack's transformation from a man of science to a man of faith. I used to be ashamed of this obsession, but screw that. 

It's important to me and I'm going to own it. 

Also, as an awkward end-note, I feel it necessary to say that I'm not trying to be sacrilegious here. We all have experiences that help us grow and cope with pain. This is simply my experience, no more and no less. 

More Wayward Attempts at Satire

I love The Onion, a satirical news website I have lauded on the blog in the past. In fact, I even used the same opening line in my previous post about it. I know I could have changed it instead of telling you that, but I am lazy and I have no other excuses for my behavior.

When looking at the "jobs" section of The Onion's website, I saw an opening for an editorial fellowship. I love my job and I'm not looking for another one, but I did want to see what the qualifications were for this position. According to the site, you'd have to connect with either LinkedIn or Facebook or send in your resume as well as submit 10 potential headlines. (For my journalism challenged friends, a headline is the title of a story. For example: Murdered sheriff lived, died by the law.)

Anyway, I decided to take this as a challenge and write my own headlines. Please note that I wrote this in literally five minutes last night, so it might not be as funny as I think it is. Here you go:

1. Your cats don't love you either, study shows
2. Local woman finds soul mate for fifth time
3. Firefighters leave kitten in tree to die
4. Stanford study reveals most children drowned by their mother are possessed by demons, post-partum depression a myth
5. Whimsical college freshman wears overalls unironically
6. Joining a fraternity will solve all your problems, fraternity pledge says
7. Jewish business owner gives large Christmas bonus to all employees
8. Murderer says he went to college with deputy, shot sheriff instead
9. Gold-digger tells wealthy suitor size doesn't matter
10. Robin Thicke's "Shake Your Hips, Not the Baby" number one on billboard pop chart for 10 consecutive weeks

In all fairness, I could actually imagine a tangible world in which Robin Thicke releases a song titled "Shake Your Hips, Not the Baby."

S(no)w

When I interviewed Joe Sellers from the National Weather Service last Thursday, he told me that there might be an inch of snow this weekend but that the weather system is rather "hit or miss."

Let's just go ahead and call this a miss. I spent all day Friday and Saturday preparing for the snow, hoping for the predicted one to three inches instead of an abysmal half inch to one inch. (This preparation mainly included perusing the internet for cozy winter wear and consuming far too much hot chocolate for one person.) Finally, Sunday came and the snow did, too. A half hour later, it stopped and never returned.

It was around just long enough  for us to get this photo. BJ did not enjoy the snow but he did enjoy sitting in Gideon's sweater.

I haven't always enjoyed snow that much. For much of my post-high school life, I saw snow as a hindrance. It prevented me from going to work. It got class cancelled, forcing me to learn twice the information in one class meeting. It was generally quite inconsiderate, especially last year when it screwed up the final exam schedule I had spent four months preparing for. Some people were excited about cancellations, but I was so busy that I couldn't really enjoy time off knowing it meant I'd still have to make all that time up and then some.

But then something magical happened. Snow started showing up at perfect moments, making it nearly impossible for me to hate it. First, it appeared when Gideon and I were driving back from Dallas, where we had seen the Old 97's on New Year's Eve. I was driving, drinking a salted caramel latte in true white girl fashion and listening to Matthew Ryan's sophomore album, "East Autumn Grin." I remember turning up the music when the song "Sadly Love" came on.

"I love this song," I told Gideon. I explained that I liked the line "angry and sad over a cup of black tea/your watery eyes and perfume were choking me" because of the imagery and the way it combined the tangible and the intangible to create a really specific feeling of hopeful hopelessness. Just as I said this, it started snowing. The music and the coffee and the snow and the conversation and the company all merged at once, forming one of those perfect moments you read about in shitty Nicholas Sparks novels. (Apologies to those of you who enjoy his novels, but it's kind of super shitty writing that makes for even shittier film adaptations.)

In that moment, snow seemed to be making all those missed classes and exams up to me. And it continued this trend, visiting the morning after Gideon and I started officially dating. We spent the night before at a party, where I consumed far too much alcohol - I'd like to say what kind but, despite how classy I am normally, I can't really remember much about what I drank - and ended up telling Gideon that we should date officially and that he was dumb if he didn't want to. (My charisma is simply unmeasured.)

The snow from the previous days had pretty  much melted that night, and I didn't know that snow was in the forecast for the early morning. So I woke up the next morning and Gideon said to me, "Hey, I love you. Look outside." I did, and I saw the ground blanketed in snow as far as the eye could see. It symbolized a blank slate for me; after years of missing each other - Gideon and I both dated other people for the first three years we knew each other - we had found a way to start something new.

Full disclosure: I was still a little hammered and didn't remember much from the night at first, so when Gideon said he loved me I thought, "I guess we're just saying this to each other now. Okay, cool, I guess." And I said it back. That isn't the most romantic thing in the world, but I feel I should be as honest as I can be on this blog without being too crass.

But still, snow really proved itself last year. I was excited for it this weekend. And it disappointed me again, as the fickle snow is wont to do.

The Moment When You Find Out Who You Really Are

When, while opening a piece of Werther's Original coffee flavored caramel candy at work, you accidentally fling the candy into the trash can adjacent to your desk. Suddenly you're faced with two options:

1. Eat the three other pieces of candy on your desk 
2. Dig that piece of candy out of the trash can like the monster you are

I think we all know which option I chose. And just so you know, it was delicious. 

It's My Party, and I'll Cry If I Want To

Tom Cotton, or as Gideon calls him, Com Totton.

I've been writing a column for my newspaper in an attempt to keep my creativity at the same level as my anxiety. I'm going to do the old copy-and-paste trick, but first I should give a little background for readers who might not live in Arkansas or the United States.

The United States is bleeding red after the midterm elections this week, with Republicans finally taking control of the Senate again. Tom Cotton, a corporation-controlled drone, was voted by Arkansans to replace incumbent Democratic Senator Mark Pryor. As a person who believes in basic civil rights and fiscal security, I am very upset about this. This is the article I wrote about it:

It's my party, and I'll cry if I want to

Trying to choose which protein bar to purchase last week, I encountered a staple of grocery stores: the angry, crying child. The child had splayed his body across the middle of the cereal aisle and was obviously displeased with his mother, who seemed far too comfortable with this type of behavior. As I walked past mother and child, I heard the boy cry out for a specific kind of cereal.

"That is ridiculous," I thought to myself, cherishing my childless home. After all, I continued thinking, the only time I have to console a hysterical, whiny individual is when the cat begs for extra treats. When my social media accounts blew up with both angry rants and obnoxious raves about the results of the midterm elections just a few hours later, I realized that I had been wrong. Furthermore, I was not only wrong about the alleged mature attitudes of those I surround myself with; I, too, had failed to react to the elections with maturity.

I went to sleep angry Tuesday night and I woke up angry Wednesday morning. When driving my boyfriend to work early that day, I grunted in reaction to all his statements. This is customary speech before my first cup of coffee, but I was especially incensed this morning. As my boyfriend left the car, he told me that he loved me. I responded, "I love you too, and I hate Tom Cotton."

At work, I checked my Facebook feed in-between editing a couple feature articles I wrote the day before. Some of my friends were even angrier than I was; one of them suggested moving out of Arkansas and a couple others insisted on calling Republicans "out-of-touch" and "uninformed," among more obscene insults. Alternatively, a few of my Republican friends gloated about how "the right party finally won."

I immediately found myself agreeing with the angry Democrats, even spewing a little extra vitriol toward my Republican acquaintances. And then, all at once, I realized that I might as well have collapsed on the floor of the grocery store next to that child the night before, drowning out his cries for sugary breakfast goods with derogatory comments about Tom Cotton.

I am still incredibly unhappy about Cotton's election and can't really see Arkansas moving in a positive direction after this, but I also know that this attitude is what partisan politics aim to create. Politicians like Cotton primarily rely on the acerbic dissent between Democrats and Republicans to get elected and to distract citizens from the laws being passed in Congress.

If Arkansans continue to buy into partisan politics in this manner - from either side - we will inevitably fail to compromise, resulting in little progress for the state's working class. We are allowing politicians to systematically alienate us from one another in the same way they alienate themselves from us once time comes to pass laws affecting our financial security and civil rights.

Instead of allowing the results of the election to disappoint me, I'm determined to focus on the good in the situation. Due to the election, the minimum wage will increase incrementally to $8.50 in 2017. This is great news; it will help so many Arkansans who struggle to meet the cost of living, and even if it won't make a huge difference in quality of living, it will make a difference nonetheless.

Just as Arkansans came together to raise the minimum wage, we have to come together on all issues as citizens and not as members of a political party. I'll be the first to admit that this is not easy. I still curse Cotton under my breath even though I know it isn't healthy behavior, but at least I'm aware of it. I'm aware that my opinions might not be the same opinions of other Arkansans, and I am willing to discuss these differences in the hope of finding some middle ground we can all stand on.

We have to learn to do this. We simply can't allow political parties to separate us anymore, because it brings us together in the worst way. Right now, all Arkansans are lying on the floor of the grocery store crying out for Cinnamon Toast Crunch, arms and legs flailing about like a fish freshly plucked from the sea.

Stand up. Stop crying. Accept what you can't change and work toward what you can, and do it together.

Fall

I know I have been slacking on my  blogging lately, but I really have been so busy that I can't think. In fact, I'm writing this late at night (as I do many of blog posts) just to fit in some time to blog. Gideon is snoozing next to me with the cat curled up on his side, and I can hear the wind ripple through the trees outside our bedroom window.

I love this time of year. I text messaged Gideon last week telling him how happy I am about the changing seasons, after driving to work among the rapidly changing fall foliage. While I had rolled up my car's windows - after paying $226 to fix my air conditioning system a couple months ago, I refuse to turn it off now - I could feel the crispness of the air just by looking at the various shapes and shades in the sky. It was like 50 Shades of Grey, but with less bondage and more science. The sun peeked through a cloud, just enough to announce itself but not too much to blind me into speeding off the road. (Though my car would have been perched really nicely on the orange-red tree-tops, which is about as beautiful as deaths come.)

I have always loved fall for many reasons. I love the orange-red tree tops. I love wearing boots and scarves and sweaters for reasons other than fashion. I love sitting by the fireplace with a cup of coffee and a good book. I love how cute my cat looks when he sleeps outside, enveloped by fallen leaves that complement his yellow-orange fur. As I said, these are things I have always loved about fall and always will. This year, though, I have a new reason to adore the season so much.

Forgive the pun, but last year during this time I started to fall in love in a real, all-encompassing, share-the-last-slice-of-pizza kind of way. At the beginning of November last year, I had just broken up with my long-term boyfriend and I was driving to Fayetteville to visit Gideon. The relationship I had been in was not healthy; I'm just now truly realizing how unhealthy it was. It took away my ability to love myself, so you can imagine how much it freaked me out to fall so deeply in love so soon after the break-up.

I recall driving through Mountain View, a small town about an hour outside of my college town. The road was twisty and commanded my full attention, something I became grateful for once I saw the landscape and the trees and the sky.  The colors overwhelmed me. Nature overwhelmed me. It was so beautiful, and I realized that just three days ago I wasn't able to see the beauty.

Then, I saw Gideon and we started casually dating over a period of two months. During this time, I denied to everyone - including myself- that I was falling in love. "Ha, we're just friends," I told my friend Kelby during one of our walks around a lake on Lyon's campus. "Of course he'd be super lucky to be with me, but everyone knows that."

Like the changing season, I fell in love with Gideon naturally. Nothing felt forced; in fact, I fought vehemently against it. I didn't want to immediately start dating someone new following a break-up, especially since the relationship with my ex-boyfriend lasted so long. I mocked women who could never remain single, and I definitely did not want to become one of them.

 But I did. I'm so happy I did. There's a quote from a song by The Avett Brothers - I think the song is "November Blue" - that captures how I feel better than I ever could: I've fallen like the leaves. (I'm not sure if they meant it in a positive way, but I do and it's my blog so you'll just have to accept the context.) It's such an awe-inspiring feeling that I can't properly describe it. It's a lot like fall, really, in the way the air has changed.

I can look out the window now and see an orange and red tornado, leaves swirling about before settling on the concrete below. I can do this with an amazing, patient, respectful man next to me. Because he's humble, Gideon would never take credit for my transformation from a bitter self-hater to a person who believes in love and people. But he did. He saved me.

It'll be winter soon, then spring, then summer and finally fall again. And next year at this time, I'm sure I'll still be falling for Gideon as orange leaves fall on my feet.