let’s begin again!

I don’t know if I mentioned in my last post (I am too lazy to open up another window and look) (oddly not too lazy to keep at it with these parentheses) but I have officially changed my name forever.  I had delayed legally changing to my married name for some reason or other.  It caused a little legal conflict because I sort of defaulted on my married name but…. BAH.  Enough was enough.  Things feel slightly hopeful just as they started to feel sort of suffocating again.  Here it is- a list of reasons I would like to be estranged from old name:

1.  It is very common among French Canadians and Franco-Americans…. getting more popular by the day as my first name has soared to the top of the list of popular baby names.  Lately it has become harder to manage than I ever imagined.  Small things like Facebook requests from people I have never met, slightly annoying things like emails I have to forward to the correct intened recipient, and things that are real headaches: the fact that I keep hearing about how I moved to Montreal and got divorced.  I was especially enraged when I was speaking face to face with someone who somehow seemed to believe that I was mistaken in thinking she was mistaken.

2. Crap that is actually associated with me, fair or unfair.  I would like to say: unfair.  The most unfair?  A person I barely know (I know this person only through their relation to another person I knew well) put me in a beyond terrible position.  I responded with all of the rage and actions appropriate to the situation but did not say anything to anyone.  This person exacted some sort of terrible revenge on me by telling bizarre and sort of horrible things about me to anyone who would hear.  Its the sort of thing I try to forget but am reminded of when I run into people and… ug.  Well… that person? From the stories?  Well, it must be about someone else… that is not my name.

3. If a person were to Google my former name an endless amount of links could be found leading people to be confused about what I may be up to.  This is related to the first thing I listed here, but worth mentioning seperately because now, if I am Googled, all things that come up are related to the actual me.  That is a sort of good feeling.

4. I was held up the border two times for things related to mistaken identity.  That is not fun.

So- a lot of people are empowered by keeping their name. I understand that completely, but I am not.  I never particularly  felt like I belonged to it.  My first name is just fine with me, but the last name just seemed to drag it into this cesspool of other people’s garbage.  It has nothing to do with the people from which I got it.  They are all fine and have the same issues.  My dad is often confused with a man who was recently arrested for smuggling drugs across the Canadian border in his wheelchair.  They were born on the same day in the same hospital with the same name.  He gets it.

I suddenly don’t have much else to say.  I was just on the phone with someone talking about unpleasant things.  Days take turns like that.  My train of thought is interrupted– I am going to go play with the child for some needed mood improvement.  I hope people are having good weeks.

please take a ticket and wait for your number to be called

Things that have taken place since my last entry:

1.  I, after so much time putting it off and re-thinking it, legally changed my name.  Funny, now all of my french names (middle and former last) are squeezed together into a middle name.  My son and I braved the Bureau of Motor Vehicles (I was surprised at how pleasant that place was.  Really!  So nice, no waits…) and the Social Security Office.  The Social Security Office involved a very long wait during which my son started reading form after form aloud to anyone who would smile at him.  It was nice to see that he had no concept of what the race/ethnicity line was all about.  Apparently he thinks “black guys” are something from a Mario Brothers game.  If you think about it, that take makes a lot more sense.   He didn’t understand the ‘white’ answer either. Asian made sense to him, but afterall, Asia is a place and there are people from it.  I suppose they are not technically ‘Asian’ anymore if they are at the Social Security Office.  Nothing like a 4 year old to make you wonder why the hell that line is on the name-change form at all.

2. A woman I went to school with lost a child in one of the most horrific accidents I have ever heard of.

3. I spent about half an hour with a Chinese food delivery person discussing Shangra-La .  He assures me it is in Yunnan provence.  I think Anthony Bourdain went there (heh).  I had heard it was somewhere near Kashmir.  This is the sort of stuff that makes an overnight shift not only bear-able but enjoyable.  Sometimes I feel a sort of brother/sister-hood between all us after midnight/before dawn employees.  I note how the night desk people from competing businesses are pleasantly chatty if they have to phone about anything.  The guy who drops off the papers at three always asks if everything is going alright.  The cab driver who shows up extra early for his morning airport run (just to put me at ease) is always eager to discuss the news.  Very few shifts inspire this sort of universal congeniality.

4.  I have not worn the blue sweater since my last entry.  I guess self-awareness changes everything.

5.  I am going to need to find some sort of handbook called “so all your old friends are now conservatives’ or something to that effect.  Maybe I will just keep trying to ignore.

6.  I filled out applications for my son to go to pre-school…. part-time.  He and I talked about it at some length and he told me he wants to have a math teacher.  Uh…. Okay.  Anyone want to teach my kid math for fun?  This is a promising attitude he has, though!

7.  I am once again internally plagued by the hoax of the dead friend who was not dead after all.  The thing has legs.  I can’t believe I was stupid enough to believe a story told to me (most likely) just to mess with me… perhaps to see where it leads.  I can feel comforted that the only person I sought out was a person who got to the bottom of it.  Too bad I believed the story for a few years before I said anything about it.   I don’t, however, believe the friendship between myself and the object of the tale will be the same again.  Sometimes I wonder if he was somehow involved in the hoax or if he holds something against me for believing it.

8.  Somewhat related to the item above, and so many other issues in life: I wish I could be solidly above so many things without ever caring.  Maybe time is indeed not linear and we aren’t supposed to ever forget the past, but it is nice to put things behind you, right? Things like ex-boyfriend, people who betray your trust, unfortunate accidents, embarassing mistakes: is there any reason to carry these agonies forward one whatever lesson has been learned has been learned?  I don’t really think so.

9. I have cooked a smell into our house that is not fading out in an appropriate amount of time.  Great.

10. We now have basic cable.  It didn’t change things the way I thought it would.  I learned that my husband is very fond of the British comedy (well… ‘comedy’ is a stretch when it comes to a couple of those) shows that are on the ‘other’ public television station.  Last night we watched a female vicar try to seduce (albeit dryly and not seductively by any real standard) money out of a business man to secure funds for a missing church window.

what my son is listening to this morning- an ‘old favorite’ to him, at four

the big blue sweater era

Hmmmm.  I am back to this.  I don’t know that I haven’t had much to say, just not much energy to say it with?  I guess??  I guess?

I can sum it up by mentioning that I have spent most of the past few (maybe more than a few) weeks in my gray yoga pants and this giant blue sweater purchased at the Salvation Army (my sister and Edie might recall that purchase as we were looking for Halloween costumes).  I had the best of intentions when I purchased it.  I thought of pairing it with leggings or something.  It is a HUGE and seemingly hand-knit sweater made from seriously cheap, acrylic yarn.   It is so cozy, though.

Now about me and my sweater eras.  Let’s reflect.

Purple Sweater 1 1986-1987: Dubbed “the depression sweater” by my mother, this sweater introduced me to the power of a favorite, lose fitting, cozy sweater.  My grandfather died, all of my classmates started shaving their legs and doing stuff with boys and I didn’t, my brother annoyed me, my mother always wanted to talk about sex and periods…. This sweater was my official off-duty uniform.  It pretty much signified to my family that they had to leave me alone or they would be very, very sorry.  My mother finally took her chance and switched it from the laundry to the trash while I was at school.

Black Sweater 1 1992-1994: I was in high school.  Boys are stupid and my friend was a paranoid schizophrenic who got violent a lot.  My parents wouldn’t let me go to any parties.   A college student of the male persuasion told me that my sweater (which at the moment had a huge run in the back) was cool and I think I lived in it for a whole year. I brought it to college and it ended up in a ditch after it got puked on by a stranger while I was walking home from a party.

Purple Sweater 2 1995: This sweater was purchased at Goodwill (most of my important sweaters are pre-owned) over the winter break that I had the first big fight with my first very long term boyfriend.  During the same break I dyed my hair black and made myself three nearly identical black dresses.  I started thinking about how much his breath stank and how I should have dumped him when I left for college and how I should have gone to conservatory instead of public university.  I got in a massive fight with my best friend and moved out!  Memories of this time are a little dim.  I remember once I lit the sweater on fire while drunk.  Luckily the cheap synthetic only melted a little on a sleeve and I continued to wear it.  Some hazy memory of destroying public property (happily) with my suddenly ex-best friends suddenly ex-boyfriend and feeling really, really happy for a moment.  When I think back to that time it is so obvious to me that if I had dumped my boyfriend and devoted a little more time to my schoolwork everything would have been so much better… Maybe I can blame the sweater.  A friend of mine and I were reminiscing about when we met and she said “I thought you were so strange.  You wore those weird black dresses and that purple sweater all of the time and acted really pissed off.”

Black Sweater 2 (1998-2002):  This sweater had such a great run.  Nothing summons up memories of the monumental disasters of the better part of my 20s like that sweater.  It was found at the laundromat (in lost and found) on a particularly stressful Sunday while I was managing my involvement in not only one but TWO stupid love triangles.  I say  ’stupid’ because I mean stupid.  Frenemies, stupid guys, and all.  All I really wanted to do was move to Spain.  I had it all planned out… but I had to figure it all out.  Talking to drunk Spanish guys at parties wasn’t enough, apparently.  I would pretend to not feel well and stay home from parties and watch foreign films and chain smoke in my newly acquired HUGE men’s sweater.  It went below my knees but made the best stay-at-home clothes ever.  I moved out, and on to a stranger life with a slut of a man who came and went as he pleased leaving me many, many nights to sit in watching foreign films in my giant, black sweater.  When I moved on from him I moved on from the sweater.  I don’t remember what came of it ultimately, but for some reason it has been smooth sailing in my romantic life since its demise. 

Blue Sweater (2008-2009): So now I have this big, blue sweater.  It is cold out and I work at night so a lot of days I don’t need to make any effort to look ‘presentable’ as I read books aloud, make dinner, sit patiently by the potty, etc.  We got uniform shirts at work and I realized that dressing up is something I NEVER get to do.  We don’t go on dates because of money/sitters…  I apologized to my husband a few weeks ago about the sweater and he said ‘its cute’.  I realized he is the wrong person to ask since he could have a corresponding entry about flannel draw string pants or green sweatshirts.  It is a little different this time, I am not full of angst.  Not even close! BUT I am decidedly in my own world a lot of the time.  It is less lonely because it involves two other people all of the time, but still, I could make an effort.

It occurred to me this morning when I was walking around with my coffee mug trying to resist the urge to play all of the moves I am behind on “lexulous” (facebook).  I am wearing a big blue sweater.  I am socializing with strangers from other countries via wordgames rather than doing whatever it takes to get along with my friends here.  I can’t be in another sweater era, can I?  I just can’t be!! Is this what the sweater era of my 30s looks like?  Chopping vegetables while watching c-span?  I am loathe to admit it but I own a pair of fake Crocs.  Black ones, because I can only stray so far… but…

hmm.  I am thinking that when my recent, maniacal calorie counting and painful exercise routine finally pay off I can discard it in a big ‘reveal’ or something.

In the mean time I am about to visit my Wii Fit and make lentil soup…

…in my stupid blue sweater.
For some reason remembering the discovery of black sweater 2 reminded me of this song:

when your little one is up every hour for half an hour…

…for three nights in a row…..

-and tonight I am going to be working all night and then I will be here awake until my husband gets home at noon tomorrow morning———————————————————————————————-

is it bad to let the child play video games on such a day as this?  I gave him his markers to color and he put his head down and cried.

I am going to go chase a piece of cake with a mega-dose of coffee.

Maybe one can understand why I haven’t been posting much lately.

i’m just waiting

to go outside and shovel the walkways again.  It is snowing!  I am awake at 3:45 managing the situation over here.  I am also playing something like scrabble online with complete strangers and emailing my friend who moved far, far away.

I cannot wait to sleep today!  I can’t believe I have to drive through a snow storm to get to my bed.  I don’t know that it is a storm- just steady snow at this point.  

So I was folding laundry here this evening and I remembered the band name I had come up with in college: “erstwhile people’s  heroes”.   Or was it “erstwhile peoples’ heroes”?  Ha.  I also had time to think of all of the things I intend to do in the next week. Most of these things are, well… bills I am paying.  My hobby: managing small amounts of money.  How much less romantic is that than rock star?  Certainly it is less fun than this game of (something like) Scrabble that I am playing with someone in Malaysia right now.

I just got challenged for playing “nadir”.  Hmm.

I don’t know what I was going to write about here. I just felt like it was the first time I had chance to stick something up here in a long while.  I am tired, folks!  I have had a sick child at home (he is better now) and stuff to get done and cold weather to deal with.  I guess that doesn’t seem like much when I see it typed out, but trust me, there is stuff to deal with these days. 

The unknown player from Malaysia has just learned a new word.  Time to go shovel.

i had sort of a plan

for this week.  I can’t remember.  Things sort of evolved into a different sort of week with  sick little one and bad roads and stuff.  Asside from that sort of thing, life is alright.  I just can’t write much about anything of interest because I was up almost every half hour last night responding to cries of “my froat hurts”.   Poor guy- at least he only gets sick after his annual doctor’s appointment!

I think we are experiencing a post holiday hibernation of sorts.  We aren’t actually sleeping or anything (believe me, no sleep) but life is a bit limitted to the things the three of us do within this apartment (or at work or in the snow at the playground).   I might be taking a little blogging break until my brain thaws a little.