Tug-of-War

Sometimes I would really love for my life to be like a movie. I would love to have some heart-wrenching scene with soft piano music (preferably composed by Philip Glass) punctuated by whispered promises and a few tears followed by one of those awesome kick-ass scenes with the motivational songs where you watch all the trials and tribulations of the main character as she struggles towards her goal (always maintaining her gorgeous hairstyle) and finally accomplishes the impossible. I want all the months of worry, stress, and mild psychosis when it comes to my writing to be all wrapped up nicely in a two minute song with a great drum beat. I see no reason why it shouldn't work that way.

Real life is so much harder than that though. Those kind of inspirational moments only last a few minutes and then whats left is the actual grunge work that you have to do. There's no fast-forwarding to the end - where the sunsets and the smiles are waiting. You have to wade through all the mud and the muck to get there and when you do there is absolutely no chance that your hair will be clean and shiny. And that's where I am with my book.

There's the excited stage where I have my nifty little idea and I lavish for a few days in the sheer brilliance that exists in ME form (not). Then there's a workaholic phase where all I do is write for several weeks and typically stop changing out of my pajama's (and when I do change, god forbid, its just back into another pair of pajama's). But when that's all said and done I end up here. Trying not to look at my storyboard because I swear its making all sorts of condescending faces at me and avoiding my computers' desktop with the folder that reads "The Book You Have Not, And May Never, Finish If You Don't Get Off Your Couch And Write Faster, Better, And More Than You Currently Are, You Lazy Procrastinating Girl."

It's not that I don't want to write. I do, truly I do. I love telling stories, I love making people laugh, and I LOVE looking at a finished piece and getting that feeling that lets me know that whatever I put down actually does make sense and might also sound nice too. It's just the in between part. The part that rests its furry little butt down just after I open my word document and before I close said document in a mad rush to find out who in my house is making popcorn and if they'll share. It's that part that scratches just below my ankle, nips at the tips of my fingers, mews incessantly and then bats its little eyelashes when I threaten to make a small sacrifice out of it in the fire pit, as if it did nothing wrong. It comes in the guise of parents and teachers, family and friends, and essentially anyone who has ever told me that money cannot be made from writing, that what I'm doing isn't work, and that I'm condemning my future husband (sorry Crayon) to a lifetime of poverty if I continue on as I am. It also rears its head under the day to day pretense of school classes, part-time jobs, scholarships, dentist bills, 401k plans, car payments, gas prices, rent, and - god help me - Etsy. I swear Etsy will be my undoing. But when I'm gone all my friends will have an ENORMOUS amount of cute (albeit somewhat unnecessary) paraphernalia to inherit.

I suppose what I'm really trying to say here is that lately my life has become this awful tug-of-war between the things that I Adore doing (my writing, blogging, taking pictures, reading) and the things that I feel like I Must do (school, work, life planning, career building, happiness ignoring). I'm trying to strike some sort of balance but unfortunately it doesn't seem like the world runs on the idea that we should make time for the things we love now instead of later.

I have a feeling this is going to be a stressful week.

Bug Zapper Racket

Has anyone ever seen one of these?

It is possibly the scariest and most inhumane little invention I've ever come across. So of course my fourteen year old little brother absolutely adores it. He thinks its God wrapped up in bug-zapping form. I think its mildly grotesque.

I didn't even know what this thing was. I knew it sat on the ledge in our exercise room and I knew it had been there for a while. What I didn't know was that this little thing had a button allowing one to send a current of electricity through its metal netting and subsequently kill whatever small winged creature it came in contact with, which vaguely reminds me of a medieval torture device. Fun right?

I might not be so biased against these things if not for the horrific display of bug homicide that was its first demonstration in front of me. The problem with this bug zapper is that it seems to be designed for small bugs. Flies. Bees. Mosquitoes. Well, I live in Utah - land of the ants that could possibly eat your dog for dinner and the beetles that chase you down with pincher's the size of a small crowbar, so the bug zapper is a little bit out of its league here. That however, does not stop my little brother from using it. Not even a little bit. So when a moth the size of vampire bat comes fluttering into my kitchen the first thing he does is book it out of the room in search for any death-by-electrocution-tennis-paraphernalia while us girls cower in the corners of the room, trying to avoid getting the wretched thing caught in our hair, and have completely forgotten the "It's Just As Scared As You Are..." rule. Whatever.

So Little Brother comes back into the room, hauling ass, in hopes that the giant winged bug will still be there. Unfortunately it is. Its landed all carefree like on the fireplace, completely unaware of the chaos its causing, and generally minding its own business except for the fact that its in my house. I can practically hear the thing singing "The hills are alive..." in all its nonchalance. Little Sister and Mom and I are all still freaking out shouting things like "Get it out! Get it out" "Its going to tell its friends to come back here if we let it stay!" "It probably has rabies!" and god knows what else while Little Brother slowly creeps forward, arm outstretched, racket in hand, and finger poised on the button that I'm sure is labeled "Emit Cruel, Unusual, and Surely Fatal Death Shock".

The room gets quiet as Little Brother brings the racket only inches away from the moth which is still perched on our mantle. We're holding our breaths. He fires up his miniature piece of electric sports equipment. And then.

ZAP!

If you've ever lit some of your own hair on fire (yes I've done this - both to myself and other people) then you can understand the horribly disgusting smell that this bug was giving as it burned. And I do mean burned. Because, as boys tend to be, Little Brother was thrilled with his new found power as Bug Executioner, and so even after the moth fell to the ground and was clearly dead he continued to roast the thing with the tennis racket. I am plainly horrified and am burying my head in my sweater to avoid breathing in the dead bug fumes which are now wafting through the house. Little Sister and Mom are egging Little Brother on with the type of chanting one would expect to hear at an ancient Roman gladiator match.

It would be one thing if it had ended there. Instead Little Brother gets down on all fours and presses the racket into the bug on the ground like one would with a spatula to a pancake causing it to not only smoke and sizzle but to emit even more of the awful smell.

"Just wait." Mom tells me.

"It gets better!" Little Sister adds.

Better how? I get my silent question answered when the moth, which is now stuck to the racket - held on by its 9th degree burns- crackles and finally gives a loud pop, accompanied by a small white-ish blue-ish ball of light which apparently means moths have a tendency to spontaneously combust after 50,000 volts. I'm immediately having flashbacks to the first time I saw The Green Mile.

"That was awful" I remark, staring at the mini cremation site our kitchen floor has become. No one agrees with me.

What is our world coming to if we can't be happy killing bugs with acidic spray and blunt force like we used to?

Tea Towels

Sidewalk, estate, and yard sales are peculiar things. If you have a knack for going to the right ones you can find yourself surrounded by all kinds of nifty little treasures, probably worth hundreds of dollars, being sold for mere pennies by ignorant but helpful owners eager to see them off, (much as you would be with your children on graduation day). I, unfortunately, don't have this sixth sense and instead often find myself in the midst of a whole lot of junk. However, this last weekend, I had the tables turned and instead found myself the host of one of these little sales.

I spent Thursday covered in small neon price stickers, sitting in the middle of a large trailer, surrounded by half-sorted boxes. I spent Friday hopping about in the sun, answering questions, and generally trying to be helpful. Saturday consisted of dark sunglasses, an umbrella, and Aloe Vera. My boyfriend called me his "little tomato". Lovely.

The sale was set up for my grandmother. She's gone and moved into my aunts' house and is now "downsizing" - as she calls it. Essentially she's getting rid of almost all of her possessions so she can live in one bedroom.

It's strange to see her be so cavalier with the things that my mother and I grew up around - not to mention how disconcerting it was to see it all being sold. So of course my mother and I went through everything and brought home a fair amount of what would have been lost. She took a sewing machine and I brought home tea towels. I know few people who still use tea towels (my mom included) but these ones belonged to my great aunt Bess (who I happen to be named after) and I couldn't bear to see them go. The whole thing tends to make you think about the fragility of the things that we cling to on a daily basis, with particular regard to our possessions. These are the things that are temporary - they do not come with us when we leave. Things like doilies, and cross-stitched quotes hold little sway when mixed in with a bunch of other more tempting items on teetering card tables, but to the people selling them they still mean home. It was me that had to iron the doilies and fix the framed quotes when someone shut the back door too hard. And as a result it's like seeing a part of my childhood leave in some terry-cloth bag with a stranger, like a lost puppy, picked up on the side of the road. I can't imagine how my grandmother felt - letting fifty years worth of fortune and misfortune be sold at one or two dollars a piece and while I know its for the best it's even harder to see the effect it has on my mom. On that hot blistery afternoon she looked over at me, just after a lady had finished paying for a green glass bowl.

"I wish I could take all of this home with me," she told me wistfully.
"We have quite a bit in the car, you know" I told her.
"I know," she said "but there's still a lot here I'd like to hold on to."
I looked over at her, not fully understanding.
"I mean," she continued "I understand that mom doesn't have enough space for any of this but these are all things I grew up around. To me that green bowl was our salad bowl for Sunday dinner and to someone else its nothing but a glass dish."

Its difficult to realize that time doesn't stand still as we sometimes perceive it to. Antique shops and aging cars in remote fields are our modern day evidence of times since past. At some point the china in the local antique store might have been a wedding present for a new couple, the car a since forgotten graduation surprise. All of these things, so anonymous and easily passed over, had a story and an owner - and now that green glass bowl, once a mark of tradition and propriety in my mothers household, is probably going to be used for something really depressing - like holding plastic fruit.

In some ways I suppose it has more to do with the fact that the people that these things belong to will not always be with us. My grandmother will die and my mother will too and at some point so will I and because our possessions can never really be a tribute to who we are our identities remain in the safekeeping of our loved ones that survive us. They are the living testament to our lives, they are the reason that we yearn to love and be loved. Our family and friends are the witnesses to our lives - and without them we might lose ourselves in the vast impersonal world in which we live. But even with this knowledge we cannot help our urge to find something physical to keep our buried with us if only to ease the fear that we might somehow forget them. Some of us have remembrance tattoo's, others have endless photo albums, and I have tea towels.