When I was growing up...

Number one when you were born

I guess I have gotten that old. I sound like my mother or grandfather: There didn't use to be a building there, milk cost .20, I made my own clothes, I chopped firewood, I walked to school...up hill, both ways.
Okay well I never really walked to school, but I got the occasional ride home from teachers and my mother never thought twice about it. She came from a generation where the educators were part of the family. They weren't predators.
These days something like that would raise eyebrows.


Huh, what do you know? Apparently I am not the only one reliving the glory days.

History of America

History of Babysitting

She's Baaaack

HI

Again I seem to have fallen off the face of the eathernet. That is, if it has a face.
Sometimes other factors seem to take control of my life and time and leave me with few options and no that does not equal Alien Abduction.

First of all I've had to spend quite a bit of time catching up on my favorite blogers too. Where have I been?!?!?
Seriously I have missed out on a lot of stuff. The crime, the passion, the news, the mockery, the fiction, the not-so fiction, the truth posing as fiction, the hilarity, the humanity, oh the humanity! I'm not gonna take the time to point them all out to you. I spent a lot of time finding these gems in the mounds of rubble, go find your own! These are MINE!
Actually I do feel a little possessive about blogs I find. If I get really excited about them they go in my daily tab. That way I can check them daily. Course I also have a writing tab for (uh Duhh) writing I particularly like. I mean I like all the writing in the blogs I like, what else would there be to like? But the writers, fiction mostly, don't post as often. So Shout out to all of you, even though you may not know who you are, including the ones who have posted less recently than I (thank you).

I went to the World Trade Center's Consular Corps Ball. I haven't been to a Black-tie affair in at least a year. I am usually at one of these things either working or filling a table for some big shlubity-shlub. I don't quite have the Inaugural ball attire but I generally pull off anything else. Speaking of pulling off anything else. I don't know how many times I have seen the train of a woman's dress get stepped on. Ladies, ladies please. If you are going to walk through crowded rooms with unobservant men, pick up the dress! Or at least wear a bra. There is nothing sexier, at a fancy dress ball, than a woman loosing the top half of her dress as some guy strides onto her train while she is walking away. Also girls, your prom dress, generally isn't gonna cut it. For the most part colorful dresses with hoop skirts are out. You are not Scarlet and even she would have known a dark color would be more appropriate. Now I'm not saying don't wear color. Please do! Black tie is a type of dress not a comment on color. I like to see a bit more color. It shows you have imagination and taste. A woman confident of her style will wear color. She knows she has taste and doesn't mind standing out. A black dress is always appropriate, but it will not hide the fact you have no couth. Not hitching your boobs up at the table and keeping your mouth shut, now those things might hide the fact you have no couth.

Recently I was also relocated by an old ex. What is it that makes people track first loves down? I am aware I made a big impression on him, and to be honest when I was 14-16 he did too. But I was over that at quickly. I did not moon over him. I did not even remember that at one time during college he made a brief appearance again as my "junky roommate's boyfriend". So he has tracked my friends down and emailed them at random periods and asked if they were in contact with me. I never responded. He talked to family, at one point he even found my work email address when I did politics and emailed me. It was all creepy and yes a bit flattering in a s-n-m powerplay sort of way. I never responded. His most recent attempt was through my sister and I wondered why I never responded.
Why now?
I think so there wouldn't be any mystery anymore. So maybe he'd get over it, get on with it. Maybe I was feeling nostalgic. I'm not really sure. As we have emailed back and forth I realize how judgmental, insensitive, crude and shallow he is, always was probably always will be. I was incensed by his first few retarded attempts at communication and blasted him for most of it. Now I know why I never got in touch with him. He just keeps returning to the scene. Although he has toned down his judgmental rhetoric he is still annoying. I never got in touch with him because I'd have to break up with him again, and it next to impossible to break up when your only friends... and only the ghost of friendship left by dead lovers at that.

And Finally a little realization. My life is a series of post-it notes. I remember when these were first invented (am I dating myself?) and I fell in love with 3M. These things were the answer to all the scribbled notes on the backs of (usually important) documents. Reminders right in your face that needn't be crossed off but merely pitched. Perfect for the car. Stop by someone's house and they're not home...fear not! A post-it note on the door lets them know you were there, unlike the note slipped into some crack that flys away in the first breeze or isn't notices on the floor for days. Sticky little book marks that you can take notes on. Brilliant idea catchers, digit passers, task assigners, boss reminders, list makers, note taker, reusable sealers, crisis healers, etc.
The solution to almost everything has become my down fall. Right now, infront of me, I have 17 post-it's. I threw several away already. Some had numbers I didn't recognize, notes I no longer needed, but somewhere there was a note that had a bit of my family tree on it. Now it's gone. Stuck to the underside of some unimportant scrap of work. I'll never get that back. Being a 3rd generation immigrant and 2 gen. with English as my first language, tracking down anything farther back than my grandfather and grandmother is hard.
Damn you useful-easily-accessible-easily-disposable post-it notes.

Call me Marlene

At every job I get stuck recording the intro for voice mail. Not just mine, but everyone's. That has lead to being recruited to do it for other companies too. I imagine the conversation went something like this. "Hey who does your phone service? I like the voice." And so I'd get another job.

My friends laugh when the call me at work. They love to mock my phone voice (and I can't really blame them). Come on we all have them. A little slower, a little higher or lower, a little subconsciously different. Perhaps it a professional thing. Perhaps it happens over time because as we answer the phone, in the silence we can hear our own voices. Whatever the reason, I have a phone voice. It's even measured and a little lower then I usually talk.

This week I have a cold.
If you can get past the Rudolph nose and the phlegmy cough, Oooo I'm sultry . Not that it matters over the phone. As long as I can keep the conversation under 5 min. they'll (most likely) never have to hear me cough. I'm breathy but in a heady way and low but velvety not gravely.

My bosses have suggested we set up a one-nine-hundred line.
I'm just glad my friends haven't called me.

Humans are just cruel, cruel idiots

Not that we ever doubted that, but there has been a lot of debate on the topic of human nature.
Most people think it is human nature to be caring, loving and yet selfish, and as a mixture that isn't doing too bad.

But how about: war and torture and genocide and patricide and, yes, hazing.
Is that human nature too?
Self destruction... "It's in my nature"

One day, a scorpion looked around at the mountain where he lived and decided that he wanted a change. So he set out on a journey through the forests and hills. He climbed over rocks and under vines and kept going until he reached a river.
The river was wide and swift, and the scorpion stopped to reconsider the situation. He couldn't see any way across. So he ran upriver and then checked downriver, all the while thinking that he might have to turn back.

Suddenly, he saw a frog sitting in the rushes by the bank of the stream on the other side of the river. He decided to ask the frog for help getting across the stream.

"Hellooo Mr. Frog!" called the scorpion across the water, "Would you be so kind as to give me a ride on your back across the river?"

"Well now, Mr. Scorpion! How do I know that if I try to help you, you wont try to kill me?" asked the frog hesitantly.

"Because," the scorpion replied, "If I try to kill you, then I would die too, for you see I cannot swim!"

Now this seemed to make sense to the frog. But he asked. "What about when I get close to the bank? You could still try to kill me and get back to the shore!"

"This is true," agreed the scorpion, "But then I wouldn't be able to get to the other side of the river!"

"Alright then...how do I know you wont just wait till we get to the other side and THEN kill me?" said the frog.

"Ahh...," crooned the scorpion, "Because you see, once you've taken me to the other side of this river, I will be so grateful for your help, that it would hardly be fair to reward you with death, now would it?!"

So the frog agreed to take the scorpion across the river. He swam over to the bank and settled himself near the mud to pick up his passenger. The scorpion crawled onto the frog's back, his sharp claws prickling into the frog's soft hide, and the frog slid into the river. The muddy water swirled around them, but the frog stayed near the surface so the scorpion would not drown. He kicked strongly through the first half of the stream, his flippers paddling wildly against the current.

Halfway across the river, the frog suddenly felt a sharp sting in his back and, out of the corner of his eye, saw the scorpion remove his stinger from the frog's back. A deadening numbness began to creep into his limbs.

"You fool!" croaked the frog, "Now we shall both die! Why on earth did you do that?"

The scorpion shrugged, and did a little jig on the drownings frog's back.

"I could not help myself. It is my nature."

Then they both sank into the muddy waters of the swiftly flowing river.