Happy Birthday, Erika

Happy Birthday, Snoogs-of-my-heart.

How the hell did you become 29? You’re really old. I love you, anyway.

More importantly, I like you.

You are so passionate in your relationships and your approach to life: open and forthright and genuine. You’re always trying to bring everyone together in a figurative group hug.

You were born two weeks early and have been impatient ever since. Impatient to fix things, impatient to help others, impatient to find answers (I have a question…)

You are ferocious, strong, smart and sassy. You are a true Shield Maiden.

I am proud you are my daughter.

Pitch Perfect Perfection

I’m answering a bunch of questions that are supposed to make you fall in love with me. Be careful. This could be dangerous. After all, we know how adorable I already am.

We are on day four and here’s the question:

4. What would constitute a “perfect” day for you?

My perfect day would start with a week of rest and relaxation: lots of sleep and naps and no voices, no questions, no cooking or laundry or anything remotely looking like responsibilities and no news. A week of completely nothing necessary. And after all of that, these three things still look good:

1. Sleeping without disturbance for 24 hours.
2. Reading without interruption for 24 hours.
3. Eating ice cream and key lime pie for 24 hours and the calories don’t count.

Then there’s this:

Part One

It would be sunny. The air would be clear, as if you’ve just cleaned your glasses of smudges you’ve gotten used to over several days and voila, sharp and crisp vision. There’d be a light breeze flowing consistently, enough that you’d feel it in your hair. It would be 74 degrees. There’d be no pesky bugs, but a variety of colorful butterflies and big fat bumble bees would be flittering around bright, blousy flowers along with iridescent hummingbirds.

I’d wake up, no alarm going off - just getting up when I feel like it - I’d stumble into the kitchen and someone would hand me a fresh hot cup of black coffee in my favorite mug. When I was seated and relaxed and immersed in my book, he’d bring me an ice cold bottle of plain seltzer.

He (could be a she but I’m not playing the he/she game) would say, “I thought you might like this. Go out on the porch, drink your coffee and read.”

There’d be no sounds except those natural ones previously mentioned. Forty-five minutes would pass and he would bring me another cup of coffee without saying a word. Part of my perfect day includes people not interrupting me while I am so obviously reading.

 
After I have been awake for about three hours, he would bring me breakfast which is two crepe filled with seedless, blackberry jam and whipped cream cheese, fresh pineapple chunks and a few pieces of perfectly crisp bacon. An extremely cold glass of Tang would not go amiss.

 
I’d need at least another hour following this for digestion. A perfect day involves no rushing and no questions of any sort and people doing things for me without asking what I want. I haven’t any idea what time it is because there’d be no clock watching either.

See, here’s the thing: I know people think it’s good to ask people what they want but when you ask me a question, I have to think of all possible outcomes, eventualities and all alternate histories before I can make a decision or give an answer. It’s exhausting and the reason why I usually say whatever you’re having or doing. And linear time perplexes me. Shoving myself into a clock regulated system makes my brain hurt. To me, time is like a big solid sphere that warps and moves. If I don’t pay attention, I often forget where exactly I am on the artificial time line of a day.

More tomorrow.

One Ringy Dingy

Lots of questions being answered over the next month. Go find out the whys and wherefores.

I hate phones. I always have.

They’re very intrusive. If I want to talk to you, I’d call you. Or better yet, I’d see you in person. Doesn’t mean I don’t like you. It means I don’t like phones. I’m not much of a chatter and I don’t like small talk. Plus, I need all of the sensory information you get from an in-person meeting. I need to see what you do with your eyes and how you move your body so I can read between the lines. Words and tone of voice alone can be very deceptive. Yeah, I’m always looking for lies.

I feel very disconnected when talking on the phone, almost like an out-of-body experience.

My mother used to talk for hours - like three hours in one sitting to just one person - and I couldn’t comprehend it even though I watched and heard it happening. What the hell could they talk about for three hours. It made my brain bleed. I sart to zone out after about four minutes. Just ask my daughter.

Phones are tools for a specific purpose. I have a question or a request, I call, I get my answer. Chow.

Utilitarian.

Really important conversations should not take place over the phone.

I think the first time I ever answered the phone was when I was about eight. I wasn’t supposed to answer the phone, but my mother was busy, so she told me to answer it. It was my Austrian uncle who told me (in German, of course and I’m not sure why that matters) to tell my mother that my great-grandfather was dead. From that point on, I’ve associated the phone with bad news.

I can let a phone ring forever and it wouldn’t bother me. I prefer to keep them unplugged or silenced. It was easier to get away with that before the advent of cell phones being organically attached to our bodies.

I like texting. But that involves writing, so, no, duh, on that.

On to the actual question for the day:

3. Before making a telephone call, do you ever rehearse what you are going to say? Why?

I don’t specifically rehearse a specific phone call per se. I rehearse all conversations, long before I have them, long before I even know I’m going to have a conversation. I’ve got conversations with everyone I know going on in my head all of the time. Maybe that’s why I run out of small talk.

More likely it has to do with my immense fear of the unknown. I think it’s a real phobia for me. I can’t stand not knowing something. If I’ve done something once, I’m good and I can do it over and over again. I’ve done things just so I can tell myself, “You’ve done this, so you don’t have to ever worry about it again.”

I think there might be something wrong with me.

Fame: I Want To Live Forever

~click image to make biggerer~

I’m working on falling in love with myself this month. I’ll be answering the 36 questions from an experiment done examining how people fall in love.

Question 2. Would you like to be famous? In what way?

The short answers are yes and as an author and artist.

The longer answers are as follows:

I don’t want to be famous like a Kardashian or a Trump, famous, infamous, just to have attention or to have my name bandied about on people’s lips. I’m thinking more along the lines of Anne Rice or Stephen King or JK Rowling. I want to be known for entertaining stories in novel form. Stories that can take you away from the everyday. Stories people will read in future generations. I’d like to write essays, too, on any number of topics that strike my fancy, mostly because we all know my opinion is so valuable. I also want to create various pieces of art in just any medium imaginable: paperdoll puppet shows, drawings, paintings, collages, dolls, beaded hair decorations, hand-sewn clothes and costumes and notebooks.