I Am The Girl Who Loves Vintage.

I've liked vintage things for a long time. I've always loved maniacal shopping trips to the thrift store where I pick up all sorts of crazy things, like an old clown costume that I wore as pajamas. Or an insane psychedelic dress I wore in a school play. Or vintage housewares, or jewelry, or what have you.

I suppose it's not a coincidence that my love of vintage items has blossomed into a full-blown romance just at the time that Shayne and I moved to Logan and became very poor. Sadly, my new relationship with vintage is nudging away my fading love affair with the color red. I want to redecorate, and this time I want all sorts of colors. Wonderful, bright, riotous, clashing colors. I don't want anything to match! Each item must be unique and completely at odds with everything around it.

And I think it will work. Either that, or someone will turn me in to the tacky house tv show and they make me change it all. But for now...joyous, bouncy, fresh, bright, happy color!

In related news, I have found the perfect fondue pot and a lot of vintage fondue cookbooks, along with a fondue journal that I believe will help me to achieve my fondue goals. My children will either throw all my things away the moment they ship me off to the nursing home, or they will treasure these silly things and marvel at their mother's summer of fondue.

New Job or Let The Good Times Roll

So I know I said this about my last job when I was in training, but I really like working at Majestic Mountain Sage. Today I filled squillions of little glass bottles with essential oil, put the caps on, wiped them down of excess oil, affixed the labels, and arranged the bottles on the shelf. Over and over. It was so nice. no pressure to sell anybody anything, just me and my coworkers and the bottles. And I finally figured out that I can actually take painkillers to help with sore feet and back. It took me long enough.

At the end of the day I came home reeking of a mix of coconut, lavender, citronella and neem oil. The neem oil smelled the worst, like rancid coffee. No kidding. It smelled moldy. But we got it done and one may hope that neem oil doesn't need to be poured all the time.

I now understand why essential oils are so very expensive. It's all incredibly labor intensive. There are people standing there pouring oils into the bottles with little beakers, printing labels on the computer, weighing each bottle to make sure it has the right amount, adjusting amounts with an eye dropper, putting everything on the shelf in a specific order, then another team comes and gets the bottles and packs them up by hand to ship out. This is the "handling" part of "shipping and handling."

Now I want to go out for dinner. I think I will.

Someday I'll Learn

Shayne's parents had very generously given us a card table and two folding chairs so we would have somewhere to sit and eat. I really liked one of the chairs, a green and white striped number with armrests. It was perfect. When I sat in it, my knees were bent at a right angle, ergonomically perfect for crafting. I scootched it right up to the card table to do some scrapbooking.

Last night, at one point, I shifted my weight to the edge of my seat. I don't remember why, but I know there was a reason. Anyway, I was sitting on the edge of the seat, and I suddenly began sinking. I heard a crackling sound as the chair sagged and shuddered floorward.

Naturally, I jumped up and inspected the chair. I discovered some duct tape wrapped around one of the folding joints that had covered a clean break in the plastic. I want to emphasize that the structure was compromised beforehand, and someone had fixed it with duct tape, which had held it together for awhile.

I told Shayne I didn't want to sit in the chair anymore because it didn't seem safe. I parked it in the kitchen.

Well, this morning I wanted to work on my summer log some more,and I decided to sit in the chair. It seemed OK as long as I sat at the back of the seat. I crafted and crafted. I decided the chair might last a long time and still be functional.

Well, then I scooted the chair back to stand up, and that's when it snapped right in half. I mean, the plastic arms of the silly thing snapped in half and the whole back broke off and lay down on the floor.

And now? I don't think we can salvage it. The St. George summers must have weakened the plastic. Drat it, I liked that chair. I need a job so I can go buy a new chair.

Because I Can (And I Like To)

So, having strep throat really sucks. Especially since, as usual, I have an atypical strain of strep and docs always kind of act like they don't know what to do about it. They give me antibiotics that are too weak and make me suffer for awhile as the meds do nothing. Extreme hatred for my sore throat.




So, to distract myself, I went ahead and made a summer log journal from my Red Velvet Art Summer Camp class. Yay! When Shayne came home he asked me why I made it, and I told him it's because I have hope that there will be things happening this summer that will be worth documenting, and I am prepared to do so.

On The Topic Of Literary Censorship For Children

I went ahead and wrote a comment for Tawnya's blog post about whether or not to censor children's literature, but I was too chicken to actually save it in a forum where I knew lots of the other people had kids. People who are parents have a tendency to summarily dismiss my views or plans for motherhood because I haven't yet had the opportunity to have children. (The truth? Despite my vocal declarations that I'm not ready to be a mother, we haven't done a thing to prevent pregnancy. It really just hasn't happened yet.) But Since I was married in November, my mind has been working overtime, forming plans that I hope will at least be guidelines I can follow when I do become a mother.

I grew up in a household where censorship of any kind did not exist. My mom loves murder mysteries, true crime and action/adventure, both in her books and in her movies. Moreover, she spent several years living in Europe, where she learned to be very comfortable with sex and nudity. She never made any attempt to hide anything from me. I remember her taking me to see Rambo III in the theater when I was seven years old. I remember making some comment about whether this movie was really appropriate. I don't remember my exact words, so my mind forms the expressions in words I would use now, but I know I said something. My mom assured me that everything would be OK. We watched the movie, which, at the time, was the most violent movie ever made. I honestly don't feel scarred. In my heart of hearts, I don't feel that Rambo damaged me in any way.

While in Europe, my mother had purchased miniature replicas of Michaelangelo's sculptures, David and Bathsheba. They were both naked. David stood proudly with his hips thrust out, penis fearlessly displayed. Bathsheba was portrayed in a bent stance, drying her leg with a towel. She wore a flirtatious, inviting expression on her face, and her towel concealed nothing of her body. These statues mortified me as a child. I turned them around on the shelf so that only their butts were visible, and whenever my mom noticed what I had done she chided me and turned them back around. She insisted that they were art, and that the blatant sexuality they conveyed was acceptable in this medium. This was her answer, in fact, whenever I felt offended by sexually charged material in movies, TV shows and paintings as well. It's art. It's beautiful.

At age eleven, when asked to write a story for class, I wrote a vivid depiction of rape. I knew by the stunned silence that rang in my ears when I was finished reading my story aloud that I had done the wrong thing. Maybe if we were older it would have gone over better. To me, the story was a commentary about things were wrong in the world. In my mind, it was right that this story should be written. Looking back, I can see how precocious I was, and how this sort of topic might be uncomfortable for others. My mom, however, saw absolutely nothing wrong with it.

There was one time, when I was twelve years old, when my mom and I left a used bookstore in Bremerton and she caught sight of the cover illustration on the book I had purchased. It depicted a woman fully clothed in medieval style clothing, holding a sword that dripped blood. At last, I had found something that offended her.

"Cydni, I don't want your heroes to be killers." She told me firmly.

"She's not a killer. She only fights because she has to."

"And does she kill people?"

"Well. yeah. But only because she has to."

"So in other words, she's a killer."

"Well..."

"I don't want your heroes to be killers, Cydni."

Really, I failed to see the difference between the character in my fantasy novel and the detectives or spies or agents in her action movies who sometimes killed out of necessity. I still don't understand the distinction. I do know that she never made any attempt to take books away from me based on what was inside. Nor did she try to guilt me out of reading them. It was entirely up to me to decide what I did or did not want to see, and usually I chose to stop watching long before she did. I'm remembering a wildly explicit European movie she rented, that I walked out on despite her urging me to stay and watch it with her. I was twelve.

When I reached a point where I wanted to learn about sex, I turned to the literature. I read books of all sorts, from graphic sex scenes to educational reading. My mom never checked up on what I was reading, and even if she had, I doubt she would have seen anything wrong with my choices. After all, I had been the one all along who dictated what I was willing to see and when. Besides, my books were small fry compared to the movies she was renting and bringing home to watch with my dad. I was the one who decided I didn't want to watch the pornos. I had the opportunity.

By this time I was a teenager, and our family was living in areas of Nevada where prostitution was legal, and where the brothels and nudie bars advertised with billboards. I lived in an environment where pursuit of casual sex was encouraged, and it offended me to the core. This was the aspect of Las Vegas life I hated most, and it was instrumental in my decision to go to college in Utah. Even at age seventeen, when I settled on SUU, I was busy narrowing my own experiences based on what I thought was appropriate.

And yet, even knowing myself the way I do, or perhaps because of this, the idea of forbidding my children to read whatever they want to is profoundly disconcerting to me. I would expect them to be upset to learn about things like pain and people hurting each other, but I honestly think I would be doing them a disservice to try to hide the negative aspects of life from them. I've always felt very strongly that I would teach my children that life absolutely SUCKS and that the way we react to life's challenges is what defines who we are. Writing this, I am reminded of one of my mother's favorite expressions: "Life's hard, then you die."

Really, in my heart of hearts, I know that my children will be precisely who they are no matter what I do. I also know that there's really no point trying to shield them from life's heartbreaks, or act as if deep pain were anything other than completely normal. Additionally, I will most likely find some way to mess up their lives no matter how hard I try not to. But I really don't think monitoring their reading will help anything. I think it would only point them in the direction of the things I don't want them to learn, which would make them all the more curious.

But that also creates a new question in my mind: is there anything I really don't want my children to learn about? The more I ponder this question, the more convinced I feel that there are appropriate ways to address any topic this child feels curious about, and that censorship really isn't necessary. I feel much more comfortable with a full-disclosure style of parenting where I simply tell my children all about life and let them choose what they will pay attention to when they are ready.

And that's why, thirty years in the future, there will be another young redhaired woman who will write a blog very similar to this one, about how her mother never shielded her from the reality of life and how, in the end, her mom was absolutely right.

Sandra Lee, The Superhoarder

So whenever I watch an episode of Semi Homemade with Sandra Lee, I marvel anew at her capacity for buying all new junk to decorate her table. She calls the array a "tablescape" and she decorates so much that I can't even imagine there's still room for food. And since her theme is different for every show, she has all new supplies every day -- dishes, napkins, silverware, vases, napkin rings, place card holders, oh my gosh!

If Shayne is in the room with me, I never fail to mention how she buys all new crap every time. His standard response is, "Yep, her husband hates her." And I can see why. I'm imagining that, after several years of doing this, she has filled several rooms of her house (and possibly one or two other houses as well, along with numerous storage lockers) with shelving units that groan and sag under the weight of her decorative bounty. She has separate table settings for every imaginable holiday and occasion, and often several different versions. Aaaaaagh!

Oh, and it's not just her table she decorates. Her set kitchen is decorated with a different theme for every show. So if her theme for the day is a tea party, she'll have lots of pink ceramics, ruffled curtains, rose-patterned placemats, etc. On cinco de mayo there will be bright fiestaware in festive colors.

Ugh. I should just read. That's what I should do.

The Johnie Shellshock of Telemarketers

I'm remembering a really great movie called The Englishman Who Went Up A Hill And Came Down A Mountain, that few people had the opportunity to see. In particular, I'm thinking of a character called Johnie Shellshock, who had been sent to fight in WWI and had returned home with a badly damaged psyche. His experiences in the war had affected him so profoundly that he no longer spoke to others. Maybe he had no words to express what he had seen.

In any case, it was easy to see that Johnie had no mental defenses against the horrors he had witnessed. Where other soldiers might have been able to disassociate themselves from what they were experiencing, Johnie internalized it and brought it home with him. The military had wisely discharged him to go home and try to put the pieces of himself back together as best he could.

I propose that there should be a similar allowance for telemarketers who have gone a little crazy and melted down under the pressure. Anybody who has ever been desperate enough to try telemarketing knows that it's a bloodbath, and only the very strongest survive, of whom I don't even try to number myself. Desperate? Yes. Poor? Yes. But not strong.

I tried to go back and do some telemarketing, and I made it a whole day without any outward sign of distress. On my second day, however, I completely lost it. half an hour into my shift I began crying uncontrollably. I made two trips to the bathroom to pull myself together and reenter the fray, but both times I collapsed into tears again as soon as I put my headset back on. At one point, when I saw my reflection in the bathroom mirror, my eyes were such a vivid shade of red that for a shocked, confused moment I thought I was crying blood.

And I just couldn't force myself to continue. I somehow put my butt back in my seat over and over at Healthways and tried not to think about the fact that there have been jobs where I literally never cried at work. But I couldn't do that this time. I just couldn't force myself to go back. I stayed at work for an hour, crying nonstop, before I gave up.

I am cognizant of the fact that I have bills, and that I can't simply go without a job. Like, I get that. I don't want Shayne to feel like he has to bear the burden of supporting us, when we both agreed that we would work together. But I understand now that I can't do telemarketing anymore, not even for a little while, not even while I look for something else. Even horses, at the end of their lives, go to the glue factory. Used up telemarketers? I dunno what happens to them. Maybe they can be recycled.

*Read At Your own Risk* -or- The Singular Case Of The Fire Alarm In The Nighttime

Shayne and I didn't sleep well last night. At some point, I became aware of the fire alarm randomly chirping, and it woke me up enough to be aware of it. I resolved to call building maintenance in the morning, put on my earplugs, and tuned it out enough to go back to sleep.

But it kept going. And it wasn't the normal chirp, either. There were occasional chirps, but mostly the fire alarm was making a repetitive beeping sound more like an alarm clock than its normal piercing cry. And I know because I have accidentally set off the smoke detector A LOT wince we moved in.

Well. At one point Shayne got up to use the bathroom and pushed the button to test the alarm. Yep, it still worked. But the faint beeping continued, just loud enough for me to hear through my earplugs. He puzzled over it for a moment before shrugging and disappearing into the bathroom for a little reading time. Wile he was gone, the beeping stopped. When he returned and closed the bedroom door again, we settled back into a fitful sleep which was presently punctuated again by the strange beeping.

When we finally awoke for the morning, or rather gave up trying to continue sleeping, I opened the bedroom door again. After a few minutes, the sound ceased.

"What was causing it?" We pondered the question together.

"Well, it's not the normal ring. It's something else. Could the weird ring mean it's detecting a gas other than smoke?" I hypothesized.

"Like what?"

"Well, didn't they tell us the smoke detectors were also carbon monoxide detectors? Could there be carbon monoxide of some sort in the air?"

"But then it's just in the bedroom. What's in the bedroom that's emitting carbon monoxide?"

"Hmmm."

We considered.

"Well, we both ate chili for dinner last night, right? I ate some and then you went and ate the rest." I asserted.

"So what are you trying to say?"

"I mean, You let a really stinky fart last night. It was bad. It watered my eye. And I bet I was farting too and didn't know it."

"You think my fart set off the fire alarm?"

"No, I wonder if OUR repeated chili farts combined set off the carbon monoxide detector."

"But how can that be?" He wailed.

"I don't know. But it's the only thing I can think of."

And maybe it was.

This Idiot Girl Moment Brought To You By The Letter Cydni

So I thought I would take out the trash. Being the person I am, I was wearing a t-shirt and a pair of stretch pants that I wear to exercise but that I usually would never actually wear outside the house. In addition, I had not showered, nor had I wiped yesterday's mascara out from under my eyes. I put on a pair of dress shoes that were easy to slip on, as I was just going to the dumpster and back.

Yep, I locked myself out. First I went to the R.A.'s apartment but it turned out she had moved away. Then I trekked over to the housing office, where they made a phone call to the MASA office, where I should have gone in the first place, and told me someone would meet me back at my apartment. So I walked back home and found...no one there. I waited a few minutes before heading over to find the MASA office, where I discovered the girl had forgotten. Ok. One of the R.A.s let me in.

So I'm I'm pretty sure the entire town of Logan has now seen me walking heavily in my dress shoes with freshly blistered feet, wearing only stretch pants that I wouldn't even put on to go to wal mart, and an old t-shirt that says, "Carrot Tops Are Green, Einstein." across the front. Oh, joy!

My Book!

Somewhere, packed away in the scary room, is the seed of a book. I must find it, and I must work on it.

...Weep And You Weep Alone

It seems strange that going to book club would be so important to me that I might actually burst into tears at the first sign that I might not be able to go, but that's exactly what happened tonight when I walked out of my front door and stood on the front lawn, pushing the unlock button on my keychain over and over. Of course, Shayne had taken my car, just as he has since we got here. But the last few days, when I was working, he took his own car, which is parked several blocks away and to which I have no key. Today he took mine, and I didn't know until it was time to go.

I guess I didn't realize what a toll living in Logan had taken on me until I found myself crying, trying to hold back the sobs that I knew would only make my face red and solve nothing. Luckily, I had the idea to ask Lacey for a ride. Otherwise I would have just collapsed in a heap, thinking about the few dollars I had been hoarding all month, the book I had read and pondered, the dinner I had looked forward to and the people (other humans!) I desperately wanted to see.

Shayne takes my car as a money-saving strategy, and he wants to become a one-car family, but I find myself becoming more and more opposed to that idea. Sitting at home with nowhere to go for three months is maddening, and I know it will only become more frustrating. Because here I am, back in Utah, in a town that smells like poop, and I don't even have the use of my car. When I was single I could at least go places. Now I can't go anywhere, and I tell myself it's OK because I have nowhere to go anyway, but really it's not OK.

Of course, it's not as if Shayne does this on purpose. He's trying to find ways to save money, and my clinical depression isn't his fault. His family functioned like this, shuttling each other to work and trading the car back and forth amongst themselves, whereas my family has almost always had at least two cars. In my family, nobody was really stuck at home. And maybe they weren't stuck in his family either, because they lived in a town where they were mostly established and they knew other people.

Rationality aside, I want to scream at him and demand my car back. No, you can't take my car away from me! Give it back! My mother gave it to me! I don't want to be trapped here in this little apartment in this shabby little redneck town, waiting for you to come home. I'm not a housewife and I don't want to be. Use your own damn car and give me mine back!

What I actually said: "When I start getting paid, I think you should get your car out of hawk, because I was really upset when I thought I wouldn't be able to go to book club."

And so we see if rational, thoughtfully chosen words can really get the point across.

Reflections Upon Having Finally Joined Twitter

I resisted twitter for a long time, only giving in so I could receive updates from summer camp on my phone. It seems a little unnatural to me, at least the way I understand it. People phone their tweets in at any time of the day, describing the minutiae of their lives to the tiniest detail. Now I'm in the salon. Now I'm watching a movie. Wow, I like it!

I mean, the whole focus of writing a story is to include the most entertaining parts that will keep people reading and exclude the everyday slogging through life. I see no reason to know what my friends are doing at every moment, and I feel quite certain they don't want to know every tiny detail of what I'm doing. (Now I'm watching Judge Judy. Now I'm watching Iron Chef. I should be reading. I don't feel like reading. I just want to sit here like a slug.)

Of course, this is the perception of a person who has never actually belonged to twitter until now. Will it surprise me? Is it really cool enough to earn its popularity. We shall see.

It's Kind Of Like In That Movie "Signs"

The back of our couch is where half-full cups go to die, and it's all my doing.

Things Everybody Else Knew About Painting That I Just Learned Today

1. It's not enough to just wear an apron. You must also change into grubby clothes.

2. Between me and the can of spray paint, the paint is smarter.

3. Spray paint flies in all directions. Well, I knew that, which is why I was prepared with a newspaper sheet to place behind what I was painting and catch blowback. But in all that, I somehow forget that paint's favorite direction to fly is down. I now have drips on my patio.

4. Spray paint has a mind of its own. It's not thick like normal paint. It doesn't cover dark green paint very well, and if you add more paint it just runs in rivulets. Not pretty.

5. Ha ha it's fun!

New Job

OK, so I went in for my first day of training. I'm a jaded soul, and I tend to be very skeptical about my ability to like, let alone do well at, call center jobs. But from what I've seen so far, this one appears to be pretty cool. So I heave a sigh of relief and feel grateful to have a job.

And I can once again support my craft habit (I hope)! So I'm kicking off the summer by enrolling in a class called Red Velvet Summer Camp and I am sooooo excited to get down and jam out some craft projects. Nothing makes me feel more content or more alive than creating something I find beautiful, and this class will provide tutorials for thirty different projects (eeeeee!).

The summer camp doesn't start till June 14, but there is consolation for me: Creative Boot Camp! It isn't about crafts but about whatever artistic medium most speaks to you - in my case, writing. I need a shove. I can never be a writer if I never write anything, right?

So the moral of the story is that I am STOKED about this summer and rarin' to get started.