Name Envy

I spent much of my childhood (and adulthood?) envying the names of other girls.

Mine was Kim Hogan. Sounds a bit like pulling up phlegm. Not to disrespect the family name, but I was not reluctant to change my name when I married.

Some girls names sounded like waterfalls (Suzanna), or a soft rain (Marissa). Some were sturdy: Mary, Beth, Donna. Mine felt like a squeak. Kim. Or maybe that’s just the way shy, quiet me said it.

Some names seemed unique to me at the time: Shelby. I quite liked that one. Cydney. Cecilia. These names sounded swirly and happy. I wanted to sound swirly and happy. If I could not sound swirly and happy, then I wanted to sound tough and strong.

My favorite name among the high school girls was Lou Gott. I know now that Lou was short for Louise or Louisa, and, like my name, it sounded like the gathering and/or releasing of phlegm. But I envied that name. It sounded like the name of a girl that would kick the shit if the shit needed to be kicked. It sounded like the name of a girl who would do whatever she wanted. Say whatever she wanted. Screw the consequences. Somebody named Lou Gott could roll with the changes.

Me? I just sat quietly in the corner with my phlegmy name and squeaked it out when necessary.

I guess I could have used my full name, Kimberly. I tried it a couple of times. Sounded like too much. Too big of a name for such a little mouse. People would expect much more of me if I used that name. I was scared of it. I could only squeak out, “Kim.”

Suppose I had been named Ethyl or Sunshine? Gertie or Margot? How different would my life have been?

What about the names of today? Just like fashion, names follow trends. Several months ago, when visiting family in Texas, I went to my niece’s daycare center to pick her up. Along the wall, above the backpacks, each child’s name was perfectly printed. While I will not list any name here for fear of violent repercussion, I will mention that it read like the roster of an Iditarod dog sled team. What will the future hold for these children? Will they proudly hold their up their heads and fear nothing in life? These are names not intended to be squeaked out. These are names to say loudly.

Or will they, like I, wish for a name like Lou Gott?

If you can test drive a car . . .

then why can't you test drive a skirt?

My daughter and I did a little clothes shopping while we were vacationing in Portland, OR. We have to do our clothes shopping online or far from home, because to shop near our home requires that all of our clothing be blue and white and have "Penn State" silkscreened, stamped, or appliqued on each item.

We stop in a lovely, well-tended boutique. My daughter picks out a slightly-above-the-knee, floaty, jersey skirt and informs me that I must try it on. Apparently, with one eye shut and using my dyslexic eye, I confirm that the price is right. I take two other items and my daughter into the dressing room with me. The clerk brings us a bottle of sparkling water and is the epitome of the perfect fitting room attendant.

The skirt is awesome. Clingy. But not too clingy. Lightweight. A dream floating over my kneecaps. Ahhhhhhh. Somehow completely (in my mind) hiding the middle-age tummy that has become an owner-occupant. The perfect skirt. The skirt of my dreams. And at such a reasonable price. I feel so good purchasing from a local designer and something made in this country (hopefully not some sweatshop on a U.S. "owned" island). We quaff the Perrier and declare I shall purchase the skirt.

I open my good eye and read the price again. Shit! Feeling buoyed by the sparking water, the attentive clerk, and the memory of my happy thighs in the skirt, I decide to purchase it anyway. I mean, it IS perfect. I tried it on and sat in it and swirled in it and bent over in it and nothing bad happened.

Until the first day I wore it. After flying thousands of miles home.

It was a breezy day . . .

I felt confident that I looked AMAZING in my AWESOME skirt. My head was high. My stride was long and sturdy. I felt liberated.

Really liberated.

I thought that the passersby were admiring the new me in my glorious skirt.

It wasn't the skirt they were looking at. No. Every one and all were getting an eyeful of untanned thighs and ancient underwear.

I firmly clutched my skirt all the way back to the car.

The hubby says the skirt looks damn good on me. He makes small guttural animal noises when I wear it. I kind of like that. So now I stride confidently through the house in my skirt, head held high. Aint no wind in the house.

In the future, when I feel the need to purchase a new skirt, I'm going to take a small fan into the dressing room with me. If I'm asked if I would like a sparkling water, I'll decline. Instead I'll ask where the electrical outlet is.

Behind Every Great Man . . .

. . . is a huge ass pile of wires.

The hubby went and purchased himself another television-related gadget. This, of course, necessitated another cable. And here is what we have behind the television.

I do think he is a great guy, though. And I don't bitch when he wants to add another electronic device to his ever expanding showcase of whirring, blinking, manly nirvana.

As long as another remote is not required.

This does make me want to go out and buy a frilly little figurine to set atop the television set.

Palace of Pain

Penn State's own Death Star. No, the photo does NOT reveal all of the ugly.

The photo is unable to convey the vastness. The grounds in front are huge. There is room for another such building on the grounds. It is high-maintenance field of grass.

The newest building on the Pennsylvania State University campus has just been revealed!!!

Good God.

When did architecture stop being an art and become a competition?

When was it determined that a building no longer needed to fit the site or the surrounding architecture?

Who said that architecture today must be the fabricated equivalent of the middle finger?

Ah, the gilded world of the celebrity architect! What joy to draw fantastical structures on mammoth sheets of paper! What bliss to ignore all but oneself! What unimaginable heaven it must be to throw bricks and concrete and glass and metal into one huge pot and have it dumped upon a stretch of ground somewhere, anywhere!

These architects cannot imagine the faces of horror of those who must frequently enter or merely view the structure. They’ve signed off on the blueprints and they are off to desecrate another plot of land with their piles of bricks and cement and etc. Theirs is only to dream and draw. Fuck those who must live in the wake of their con(des)truction. Ooooh,. That was a nasty word. Fitting, though. If at least fifty percent of the viewing public does not utter that word at first glance, then the celebrity architect has not done his or her job.

Alas, no one wishes to build like the ancient Romans these days. Or, at the very least, the pre-war apartment-building architects that shaped New York and other great American cities. No. Today every damn building must make a statement. And each statement must be different from the statement on the adjoining plot of land. With each new building, we must hear the echoes of the architect’s chest pounding.

What we’re experiencing on the Penn State campus is an outright cacophony of colossal architectural piles.

And the newest has just been revealed. The Millennium Science Complex. For months and months, the construction had been hidden behind fences. And then, last week, there it was. Gleaming and raw. My screams could be heard well over the visual noise of this new building.

There is where one would go to experience pain. Tortuous pain. There can be no pleasure in this structure. This is the building of screeching metal, blows to the head and rivers of body fluids. This is where one would go to receive a gravel and glass enema, to remove limbs without anesthesia and bring the partially dead to be ground into pastes and animal feed. This is the place for general maltreatment.

Ah, even though a ruin, the Parthenon has aged well. The streets of Paris are lined with venerable, ivory edifices. Oxford teems with antique arched doorways. Such places are only improved by time. Such a future cannot be possible for the Millennium Science Complex. I imagine it will wane like a multi-million-dollar cereal box in the sun.

There is no room for age built into the celebrity architects’ creations. They are built for the now. The wow. Then it is onto the next wow and to hell with what they have left behind.

Now, if you’ve got an elderly aunt to dispose of or a redundant limb or a desire to fill your innards with shards of glass and rock, you know where to go to have your needs fulfilled: Penn State’s newest palace of pain.

The Fourth

I've never understood why big bangs have been chosen to represent freedom.

I hate noise.

I have a phobia.

Yes, some people hate blood. Some people fear needles. Some are scared of dogs.

Whatever.

I'm terrified of great big kabooms.

Show me a needle. Dandy. Fine. Take my blood. I don't care. Show me a needle and a balloon at the same time. I'll freak out.

I'm having many beverages before I go out to see the fireworks. Its the only way I can deal.

Please excuse any typos.

Pour me into bed later.

Aging. Part 2

So, I finally got my eyes examined.

The chipper eye doctor confirmed that my eyes had not gotten much worse over the last few years. (yay)

I picked out a cool pair of glasses to replace my Granny Clampet pair. I wanted a new, cool pair by the time I visit Portland, OR, next month. I hear that the hot girls all wear glasses there. And these are not bifuckals. Nor are they "progressives." I think that's the new word for bifuckals. The doc. and I didn't think they were necessary. Yet.

But, now, there are foot and ankle issues. Jeez. I've had to see another doc. about the ankle swelling. New meds. Crap. I'm chowing down at the pharmaceutical buffet each morning already. I figure that it can't hurt to find myself some more comfortable shoes. No, not those black lace-ups that go with support hose. Those are next, though.

I've entered the land of Birkenstock. I've entered a land of just plain old friggin' ugly. Comfort and stability are my new goals. Straight-jacket shoes here I come.

And the hubby has asked if my new Birkenstocks come with a tube of armpit-hair fertilizer.

Parenting - Part 1

Children might play contentedly in a room by themselves. Sometimes silently, or quietly humming. I DID say SOMETIMES.

However, once a parent walks into the room, their mouths fall open, and like a nestful of baby robins, they begin to peep all at once.

They may ask questions. Sing a new song they have just written in their heads (maybe still writing in their heads). Make a lengthy proclamation. Or all three in one breath.

We are traveling this weekend, therefore, we are staying in a hotel room with one bathroom. Sometimes our bathroom activities overlap (NO not in a nasty or extremely invasive way). My daughter is taking a bath and humming and I enter the bathroom to dry my hair.

I turn on the hairdryer. The robin peeps.

“Mama, what would flour and milk and water together taste like?

“Mama, was Hermoine wearing a wig during the first Harry Potter movie?

“Mama, does all of that stuff you put in your hair do anything?”

And those are only the questions I could hear over the hair dryer.

Mama sigh.

"Not much."

"Probably."

"Probably not."

I'm not much in the mood for conversation this early. I turn off the dryer, head to the laptop, and record this for posterity.