School girl days

Today in our public speaking class we had to talk about a defining moment in our childhood.

I think I might have made my moment a bit more defining than it actually was, but here's the essential story.

When I was eleven-almost-twelve (August 17, 1990) my cousins moved from Florida, where we all lived, to Lancaster. My cousins were like the biggest part of my social life to that point. I'd had some friends off and on at school, but my family was definitely where I felt most comfortable. We played together all the time . . . long after my friends had outgrown their Barbies, etc., my cousins and I were still creating stories with ours. We did so much together, and I was horrified when I heard they might be moving, and just plain sad when they actually left.

The morning that they left we ate egg casserole for breakfast, after they'd all spent the night at our house because theirs was packed. We hung out, and I felt sick to my stomach, and then it was time for them to go. I was laying on the floor, I remember, and they all walked by to say goodbye. I just looked at their feet and wept.

None of us quite knew what to do. My dad probably went out to mow the lawn. My mom, my brother, and I went to see Back to the Future III, because we needed something else--anything else--to think about.

Today in class, I spun this into a story about how the leaving forced me to break out of my shell, make new friends, and get comfortable with people. However, I'm not sure that it actually did. I did make more and different friends in my years in middle and high school, but I probably would've done that anyway.

My life did change that day, and my college choice and my choice to move to this area probably came about because of that original move. But I think that mainly it was my first lesson in the fact that no matter how badly a thing sucks, and how badly you DON'T want it to happen and pray that it won't, and how much you don't think you'll survive . . . you do, and you can, and after a while things seem normal again.

Yes! And it counts!

I once saw Dick Vitale, in person, after our Junior-prom-that-was-not-a-prom. We always went to the same hoity-toity part of town to run around and take pictures, and DV was there and made some kind of (nice) comment to us.

I kind of liked him after that, but hearing him tonight on TV made me think he really doesn't know what he is talking about. He's definitely almost unintelligible, which is always a bad quality in a sportscaster.

(Anyone who knows: is the title of this post a Vitale saying? Or is it Marv Albert?)

----------------------------------------------------------------

And in more positive news, I managed to do a whole cooking project with my dad with neither of us getting irritated!

Little Children

Tonight I went to Coldstone Creamery for dinner. Yes, ice cream for dinner. Not healthy, but I had a gift card.

A harried looking woman with three boys was ordering ice cream for her older sons. Her youngest son, a little blond boy of about one, who his mother called Sam, was running around. He was kind of grubby, and had a cut under one eye, but he was cute and he smiled at me while he pointed at all the toppings, which were fascinating to both of us. I talked to him a little while we waited.

Finally the woman seemed ready to go and was in the process of corraling her older sons. I wasn't really paying attention, but suddenly something was flung against my lower half. I looked down to see Sam wrapped around my leg.

"Hey, what are you doing?" Sam's mom came walking over to us. "Sam, that's not me. I think you're confused."

I smiled at her while Sam held on. "He thinks you're me," she said. I looked down at Sam, who smiled at me without that bewildered look that kids normally have when they realize they have the wrong person. I didn't argue with his mother, but I think he knew exactly who I was.

And it was very cute, and made me happy.

A few years ago I was at the airport watching a man come down the hallway toward baggage claim after exiting his plane. When he opened the door and stepped into the baggage claim area, a blond four-year-old, who couldn't have been more excited, called "Daddy!" and came flying across the floor into her father's open arms. Her mother (his wife) followed. She gave her husband a rueful smile and a kiss, because really, she couldn't top that.

Nothin' ever seems to fit

This morning was one of those mornings. The foggy, stumbling-around kind, the kind of morning where everything seems off. I had vague memories of crazy dreams, featuring people I’ve heard of but never met, and when I woke up I felt as though I’d just had some unpleasant experience or conversation, that my life was about to fall apart.

Fortunately, I’m over it.
-----------------------------------------------------------

And now for some post-holiday fun: a song lyric challenge!

How many songs can you think of with the word “Monday” in them? (Right now, I’ve got five.)

Holiday

Thanksgiving 2006 is over. Recounting each day's events here would just get boring, but some highlights: a) saw Borat. Funny in spots, uncomfortable in others. b) had Thanksgiving dinner in a restaurant on Cape Cod. c) Went to karaoke. My sister-in-law is practically a professional singer, so EVERYONE comes out to hear her sing, and stays until 1 AM. Her version of "I Will Always Love You" closed out our evening.

Some pictures to illustrate the holiday below. More pictures, as usual, on Flickr.

Katelyn and Matthew enjoy a family Thanksgiving.


Madison and Drew making faces for Ali.


Mark and Katie. Are they a good-looking couple or what?


My parents, aunt, and a family friend are bemused by a drunken college girl singing "I Touch Myself."

Ta-Da

I go home tomorrow and I've managed to post every day!

Gotta Go!

Live blogging from the Apple store in Hingham.

Probably should stop now.

Better things to do

Happy Thanksgiving!

Look at all the lonely people

Last night, while waiting for my mom to get her luggage, Mark and Katie and I did some people-watching in the airport baggage claim. The airport is one of the best places to watch people, and we saw some joyous surprise reunions, a woman singing (quite loudly) to her baby, and a bunch of other interesting people.

The most interesting person was a girl, in her early 20s, waiting for someone. She was on her cell phone, she was looking around, but she couldn't seem to find him. She didn't even know who she was looking for. At one point she even looked at my brother and said, "Hey?" with a smile, but then got embarrassed and turned away when she realized he wasn't who she was looking for. We kept trying to guess who she would finally hook up with, but when we left, she was still wandering around, and we had no resolution.

That's the trouble with people-watching. You never know the outcomes.

Leaving on a Jet Plane

Thanksgiving in the Boston area. Year 21.

I’m not sure what it would be like to NOT have Thanksgiving with my mom’s family in New England. My brother married a Canadian, which was a smart move, because her family doesn’t have Thanksgiving in November and so he never has to miss this, either.

I’m particularly worried about the blog contest, though. When I signed up for this thing, I knew Thanksgiving would be a problem. Normally I don’t touch a computer for most of the week, and I certainly don’t blog. That will need to change.

At 1 PM, I’ll be leaving to drive south to Baltimore to hop my plane to Logan.

Stay tuned for updates and photos of family Thanksgiving madness!

Lend me your ears

Some days, when I come home from work, I pity my non-existent husband.

Because if he actually existed, he'd get a earful of incoherent frustration. Poor guy.

At least my 30 minute drive home, in which I hold imaginary conversations with people who aren't present, would take some of the pressure off of him.

This post makes me sound insane.

Too Bad

My parents now know about my blog.

Which is fine, and I figured it would happen eventually.

Sadly, however, this means an end to all my posts about cocaine-fueled sex romps.

Hi, Mom!

American Girls

So, I’ve never been a hot girl.

And now that I’m 28, the chances are getting pretty slim that that’s ever going to happen. I don’t want this to sound whiny, because I certainly don’t think being considered “hot” is the most important thing in the world . . . not even close.

(“I know this obsession with thinness is unhealthy and antifeminist...but that's what a fat girl would say!”)

Plus, there are lots of women who fall somewhere in the middle, who are attractive to some and not to others . . . you can’t separate every person neatly into “hot” and “not” categories.

However, working where I do, in an environment where I am one of the older women (believe it or not), there is significant interest in who is hot and who is not. When I was younger, I would assume that people were thinking nasty things about me, comparing me to the hot girls and thinking how I was not hot. However, I’ve decided that isn’t really the case. They aren’t thinking about how NOT hot I am, they just aren’t thinking about me at all. Even when it’s not spoken, there’s a certain amount of extra attention that gets paid to the hot girls. It’s actually kind of funny to watch. When it’s not making me DIE INSIDE.

Just kidding. Most of the time I’m okay with myself. But sometimes I wish, for just a day, that I could know what it’s like to be a hot girl. To have men’s eyes follow me when I walk through a room, or have them be extra nice and helpful and attention-paying.

I suppose that I could diet forever, and get some essential plastic surgery and blond highlights. But that wouldn’t make me a hot girl . . . just a “Swan” version of a hot girl, which is hardly the same thing.

Maybe next lifetime.

Done and Done

There. I've posted.

Still in!

9 to 5

Can we talk about how much I love The Office?

It's the only show I plan my evening around, the only show that I watch that makes me laugh out loud, the only show that makes me talk to the TV and groan and cry.

I may be taking it all a bit too seriously.

Mainly, I love Jim. I'm putting up with this Karen girl right now, because she's pretty cool, and because obviously if Jim and Pam got together this early in the series all the good sexual tension would be gone. And two weeks ago, when Karen grinned and said, "I'm kind of into him" . . . well, that made me like her a lot. Also, that she would move to Scranton to be with him, even after he told her she should go to NYC.

BUT . . . Jim and Pam are it. Tonight, while Pam watched Jim and Karen together, it broke my heart for her. And all the awkwardness with Jim. Just so sad.

I have faith that things will work out someday. Jim and Pam BELONG together, people. It's fated.

But I hope the show's writers can find ways to keep them apart until the last season, because the show won't be nearly as fun without all this.

Blogiversary

Happy anniversary, blog!

It was one year ago today that I made my first post in this blog. I wasn't sure what I envisioned when I started, but what I've got now is okay with me.

To celebrate this happy occasion, here is the story of how my blog got its name:

We were sitting around the living room of my aunt and uncle's house one evening, arguing over some arcane bit of trivia from Farmer Boy, and decided to go directly to the source to uncover the answer to our question.

(Farmer Boy is one of Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House on the Prairie series of books, and our family is a teeny bit obsessed with it).

My aunt started reading directly from the text, about something, when she came to this statement: "I'd rather have a nimble sixpence than a slow shilling." We started laughing, because even after having read the book a zillion times, none of us remembered this old-timey quote.

"Nimble Sixpence. My new screen name!" said my cousin, Tim. He was kidding, but I stored it away in my head. And the next time I needed an email address that did not include my name, I became Nimblesixpence at yahoo.

From there, it only made sense to buy the domain name, and then finally, very tentatively, to start this blog.

Looking over it now, it's not really that exciting a story. But that's how it happened.

The end.

Growing Up

"My dad just gave me this book How to Win Friends and Influence People," my friend Melissa told me. She was scornful. "Whatever. Why would he give that to me?"

"Yeah," I said, equally scornful. I didn't know what the book was, exactly, but it sounded dumb. "Whatever."

We were about twenty-one, in college, and this book seemed like the ultimate in stupidity. A book for people all beaten down by the system, submitting to stupid rules of business. People we would never be.

Fast forward seven years.

I just finished the first three chapters of How to Win Friends and Influence People, along with two other Dale Carnegie books with similar titles, and I must say, they're pretty good. Sometimes everything I'm thinking about gels, comes together in the same places, over and over again--like a theme. And that's what's been happening lately.

Back at my old job, I had a very bad boss. She was negative and critical, she talked only about herself, she expected perfection from herself and others and was ungracious when she didn't get it. It scared me, because I could see small parts of her in myself, and I was (and am) determined not to become like her.

I'd kind of forgotten about that until I started reading HtWFaIP, and then I remembered her, and thought about how she should read this books and put the principles into practice.

But even without thinking about the woman who is my anti-role model, I've been thinking a lot about the value of being open, uncritical, positive. I've seen people be amazingly gracious to me when I don't deserve it. Over and over I keep hearing (and seeing) the same things, and I hope they're sinking in.

I learned stuff in college, and in high school, and it was all interesting and crucial in my development. But a lot of it was apart from me. It was intellectual and deep. It was philosophers and artists, religion and social movements. And I examined my faith, and thought about things. But this post-college life has been about a self. What I feel, how I conduct myself, even how my body works. All my baggage and insecurities, relationships, friends, loneliness, how I work, how important my family is.

This is Mel. I feel like my 20s are and have been about getting to know her and the way she relates to others. Getting her thoughts on various life stuff figured out. Going through these growth periods where everything seems to revolve around a theme.

If each decade continues like this, I'm going to know so much when I'm 80.

All the reasons why

So the blood on my car was deer blood.

If Maccaroni Grill hadn't had a forty minute wait, resulting in choosing Applebees.
If Applebees had allowed us to sit at a table instead of the bar.
If text messaging wasn't an option.
If my friend had remembered her bag that she had slung over the back of the barstool.
If she'd had a spare set of keys.
If she'd been OK with getting her bag on Sunday.
We wouldn't have had to drive back to Timonium late at night to get the bag.
We wouldn't have hit the already-dead deer lying in the road.
I wouldn't have had to wash my car.
I wouldn't have left my wallet in the carwash.
And I wouldn't have missed a day of blogging.

We actually said a prayer before our late night, hour-long drive BACK to Timonium, and my PS to God was "please don't let us hit a deer." God must've known I was thinking of a live deer, though.

Very funny, God. At least I got my wallet back intact.

Flying Trapeze

So, yeah. I mulliganed yesterday. It was a long day, and I wasn't home until 2 AM.

I was trying to save my mulligan, but I guess not. I'm without a safety net.

Now I'm going to clean the blood off my car.

Ms. Pacman

Question of the Week:

(I think this may become a regular Friday feature. I’m stealing all these questions from another blog, though).

If you had to live your life in a video game world, which video game would you choose?

It's Working!

Now the clip works. See below.

Thanks, TimN. That was ridiculously easy.

Night and Day

So, that Cosby clip I was talking about the other night? Found it.

YouTube. Is there anything you can't do?

Update: Apparently YouTube can't post clips in my blog. Even though the link is showing up in the html. Any ideas, anyone who knows more than me?

Notes on Election Day

I voted today. I was at my polling place at 6:50, but the doors didn't open until 7:00. So I waited, and planned to be first in line. Unfortunately, there were two entrances. So I ended up being third or fourth.

A woman behind me, in a similar situation, was very annoyed. She told an old man who'd come in after us, but walked past us, to get behind her. I'm not sure what her problem was. If she was that rushed, why not go after work?

The first person in line was a Spanish-speaking man. Not a problem, because ballots are bilingual, right? Wrong. He couldn't read. English or Spanish. They tried to get help on the phone, but with no luck. So he left, presumably to come back later.

I voted with a pen and paper, filling in bubbles. The all-computerized machine was broken. I felt very old-school . . . even the old lever machines seemed more sophisticated. But when I was done, the guy in charge ran my page through the scanner, and the screen said "Your voted has been counted" and he gave me a receipt.

So it must've worked, right?

---------------------------------------------------------------
The older you get, the more time you spend in meetings. I should keep track this week. Because there are going to be a lot.

I really don't like coming home in the dark. Darkness seems to make traffic heavier somehow. However, once I'm home, I like being there and don't want to go out again. That's just out of the question for the rest of the week.

I've written here before about the house next door. Someone bought it! And they are ripping stuff out tonight. Whoo-hoo!

The night time is the right time

I get my best ideas at night. Then, by morning, I decide they weren't such good ideas after all.



The title of this post is a song lyric . . . and I only know it because of that Cosby show where they all put on a performance for their grandparents. They did at least two of these anniversary performances, and I was always fascinated.

There'll be parties

One of the cool things about being married or in a LTR is the built-in date you have to every social event. It's automatically assumed that you have someone to go with to things like weddings and Christmas parties.

As a single girl, it's a bit trickier. The company Christmas party is upcoming, and I do not have a built-in and assumed date. This then presents the eternal singlegirl question: what do I do? Go alone? Get set up with a guy I don't know very well? Ask a guy friend?

Going alone is OK. It means I only have to be responsible for me. I don't have to worry about making sure he's having a good time, or introducing him to people, or trying to make conversation like I would on a set-up.

On the other hand, it's not nearly as fun to dress up and drive yourself to the Christmas party alone. But most of my guy friends are married or attached, and it seems weird to ask a married guy to go with you to a party while his wife stays home.

Fortunately, I have solved the entire problem by co-opting my cousin Tim to come with me. He's engaged, but he's my cousin. He's pretty good at talking to people, and we don't have to worry about any awkward conversation. Plus, I've already told him work stories, so he has some idea about the people he'll be meeting.

His assignments for the evening: to be the designated driver, and to keep me from getting drunk and making a fool of myself (the chances of which are very slim anyway). In return, I have promised him plenty of crazy Christmas party excitement and drunken shenanigans, so I hope my co-workers don't disappoint.

The Heat is On

Last week sometime, Mike jokingly suggested that maybe I not turn on the heat until December 1. I entertained that thought for about five seconds, thinking of all the ways I could put up with it . . . all the mind games I would have to play with myself, the coat I would have to wear whenever I wasn't in bed, the activities I would have to come up with to keep myself away from home in the evenings.

And I knew that wasn't going to happen. Today I woke up to 50 degrees in my bedroom. I was nice and warm under my down comforter and blanket, with my fleece pajamas pants, two shirts, and down booties, but whenever my hands came out from under the covers, they got numb. I got on my laptop, and I could barely type. I couldn't hold the book I was reading or make a phone call without my hands freezing.

And so the heat went on. It still hadn't warmed the house much when I got in the shower though, and the steam that filled the bathroom was a crazy thick fog. I could barely see my shampoo.

But I will try to beat this date next year. No heat until November 5, 2007!

JFMAMJJASOND

Question of the Day (totally stolen from another blog):

If you had to pick one month of the year during which you would be alive (you'd be dead for the other 11 months), which month would you pick?

(You're always alive only during this one particular month).

White and Nerdy

Tonight: trivia and Miller Lite at the sports bar. Good times. Tim and I were the bar winners, beating even the mainstays who've been there every night for ten years.

Let me just say: if you ever need a trivia partner, I'm quite good.

My best moment tonight: knowing that Brian De Palma directed Carrie before the choices even showed up on the screen.

And now it's November

I used to think that a year was a long time. When I graduated from college, I didn’t want to commit to more than a year in any one place. I was going to spend time doing voluntary service, "but only for a year!" When that fell through, I was going to work as a secretary: "I can do it for a year."

I didn’t want to limit my options, didn’t want to be confined, didn’t want to commit to anything I might not like for any real length of time. And I’ve heard similar sentiments from more recent college graduates. But, FYI: a year is not a long time AT ALL.

I suppose, if you are in a hellish situation, a year might be a nightmare. Or if you’re counting down to something great at the end of it, a year might seem long. But even the most boring, blah situations turn into two or three years before you even realize it (i.e. my secretary job. I really wish I had been blogging then, though. Endless stories about high school hijinks to brighten my writing).

At the end of this month, I will have been at my "new" job for six months. Half of a year. There are now four (soon to be five or six) people in the department newer than me. Insanity.

I remember this time last year vividly, and it doesn’t seem possible that twelve months have come and gone since then, although plenty of stuff has happened, new job included.

Maybe I still feel like a year SHOULD be a long time, and that’s why I’m continually surprised when it’s not.