Momentary Time Machine

5:15 pm on a Tuesday evening in the locker room of the gym that I only belong to because (a0 it's close to work so I have no excuse to not go and (b) it's cheap.

But suddenly, I feel like I'm frantically trying change without being seen after fifth period gym class in my small town public middle school.

At least that's how I felt as I listened to the three women surrounding me cackle to each other about just about every other person in the place. Then they began to complain about how crowded it was (20 people) because "everybody skips on Monday so they feel guilty today." Um, hello? Until this week I was here every Monday and I've only ever seen one of you three here!"

When they noticed I was there they began to speak in code. I guess it would have been too hard to stand together and gossip quietly rather than spread across the entire locker room and yell to each other.

These were three grown women with cars and jobs and boyfriends and things talking and behaving like they were 14. It was sickening.

Other than the two or three people from work that also go there, I don't really know anyone at the gym. But I always try to smile and be friendly and carry on those trite conversations one tends to have in the gym locker room.

To me, these three were kind of breaking the spirit of the place. Sure, there are people at the gym that you think those thoughts of. My gym back in Kentucky was in the yuppy part of town and it was full of all sorts of characters. Like the women who "exercised" fully made up and wearing jewelery. And the trainer who only spoke to you if you were a pretty girl. And the big muscly guys who stood around and made a lot of noise and kind of looked at the really big free weights but never seemed to do much exercising. But you don't discuss them in the locker room. You go home and blog about them later.

Don't you wish...

Courtesy of my mild obsession with Gilmore Girls, I've become attached to watching Veronica Mars. The unintended negative consequence of this is that I'm forced to watch commercials for some of CWs more inane creations.

The latest contribution to this mess is some reality show searching for the next Pussycat Doll. Because, hey, we've exhausted every other ridiculous idea out there short of Who Wants to Date an Out of Work Actor?

The latest commercial for this train wreck came up during Veronica Mars. In it, a fairly innocent looking young girl says "I want to be a Pussycat Doll because they stand for female empowerment."

I'm sorry, what? Which part is empowering? The outfits that would be too small for the third grade basketball team? The wild gyrating? The grabbing yourself in front of thousands of salivating young men?

What is this world coming to when exhibitionism and objectification qualify as empowering? Shouldn't this sweet-looking little girl aspire to be like Hillary Clinton or Madeline Albright or the women of the WNBA or the women recently named as the presidents of Harvard or Princeton if she is interested in female empowerment?

Musings outside my head

Why is it such a frightening prospect to look in my rearview mirror and see only darkness?

Is it because I grew up in a densely populated small town and am not used to it? Is it because I am largely skittish about all things I cannot control? Is it because it is some literary metaphor for my empty past?

After seven years spent living in and around the center of medium sized midwestern cities, I suddenly find myself in a fairly rural part of suburbia. It's nice to be in a land where deer pop up in the strangest places and people are serious when they say not to out your trash out too early because it might attract bears.

There are trade offs for this luxury. My commute is a bit longer than some of my colleagues' (though not as long as the woman who comes from Wilmington, Delaware every day just so her son can stay in the Delaware Military Academy...). It is long enough that I must remember to set my coffee pot up at night so I have hot caffeine in the car with me. I'm a much calmer driver after my morning coffee.

Some services are harder to find out here, too. We have a whole bunch of furniture we want to get rid of and can't find anywhere to donate it. It's good furniture, we're just trying to declutter. But the nearest Goodwill is nearly an hour away.

Then, there's the fact that I keep finding myself on dark windy roads bordered by towering colonial mansions and vast expanses of farmland. I'm a compulsive rear-view mirror checker. Like I've seen one too many spy movies and think I might be followed. But on these roads, all that compulsive checking just reminds me that I'm alone on a dark, windy road. And it's unnerving.

Or it's a reminder that I'm nearly 30 and still haven't managed to take over the world.

Books

One of the greatest joys of finally having our belongings out of storage is that I have been reunited with my books.

I am a voracious reader and a chronic hoarder of books. I like to reread things often, so the library is not always a practical option for me. I own a lot of books acquired through a variety of means.

Many a person has tried to convince me to throw some books away (usually while they were helping me move them), but I just can't part with any of them. Like I once told a friend who was complaining about her husband with an identical habit "Would you ask me to throw away some of my friends?" She was not amused.

But this afternoon/evening I was reunited with my dear friends. As I meticulously sorted and alphabetized them (yes, I have issues), I rejoiced in the memories that each carried or thrilled to the excitement of reading the back to figure out which one this was. It was like the comfort of an old friend in the midst of the chaos of moving.

Simplify

Today was moving day, and I learned that two people who condensed two fully formed adult lives into one acquire a lot of stuff.

When I moved to NJ at the beginning of October, I told my husband he had full scale permission to throw out anything he wanted to. I told him now was our chance to break our pack-rat ways and simplify.

He failed. Miserably.

We currently have a garage that is half full of garbage that we have not yet figured out how to get picked up. We also have a lot of furniture that is more or less holding places until we can afford (or until the delivery of) decent furniture. We also have a handful of things that were damaged courtesy of some bad packing in Kentucky (even the movers today couldn't believe it was a professional packing job) that we're kind of not sure we want to replace.

If anybody owns a large dumpster, please let me know and bring it by my house. Or if you have connections at one of those TLC shows where they throw out all of your stuff and make your house look pretty.

10 Wild Guesses

Thanks to Wonderturtle, I have been caught up in a web of tag. So, you must now endure 10 of my favorite things beginning with the first letter of my middle name.

M&Ms: How can you not love these tasty little treats? I even love the little M&Ms with arms and legs that they use to sell them. And a lot of people think that's creepy.

monkeys: In grad school, I kept a picture of a baby macaque on my desk. I don't care if they throw their own poop, I think they're cute and it would be fun to have one around.

Mom: I'm a big fan of my dad, too, but that doesn't start with M, now does it?

microbes: You don't get a Ph.D. something unless you like them. Plus, have you ever seen how loveable they make them at Giant Microbes?

Matrix: I'm not sure this counts. But my car is a Toyota Matrix. It's fun to drive and so much nicer than '98 Kia Sephia I owned before this car. So I'm counting it.

Millenium Falcon: It's the first thing that came to mind from Star Wars that starts with M. Plus, it was a really cool ship.

Melissa: She's my oldest sister. I like my other sister, too, but like my dad, she suffers from not starting with M.

microscopes: For to see my microbes with.

mint: Mint is tasty. Plus, I work in toothpaste and mint is very important to us.

Mission Control: All of the hard work of space travel, none of the glory, fancy toys and amazing views of space. Way to go, guys.

Now it's your turn. Ten things that start with the first letter of your middle name. If you're one of those people with no middle name, make one up.

Neighborhood Battles

When I was very small, our next door neighbors were too elderly sisters. One was a nice odl lady who offered us staled cookies and overly brown bananas and the other was a slightly crazy drunk who wandered the yard muttering to herself most days. My sister and I longed for kids to move in so we could have crazy adventures like the kids in books.

There were two other houses on the block that had children. One was a large white mansion belonging to one of the wealthiest families in town. They had seven children (three boys and four girls). The three boys were the perfect age to want to bully any little girl remotely close in age to their sisters. The two oldest girls would, over the years, serve as our babysitters. The two younger girls were our age, but with five older siblings, not in need of friends to get into trouble with. The other house was a multi-family home that appeared to house five branches of a single family. The oldest child was our age, the others were toddlers.

The biggest problem with all of these other children was a simple one of territory. My sisters and I attended the local public elementary school. The other kids went to the Catholic grade school. We instantly had nothing in common.

With this background, you can imagine out excitement when, following the not-too-surprising death of the drunken sister, the house next door was vacated and the elderly sisters were replaced by a family. Jenny was one year my senior and Mark was two years my junior. We thought we'd struck gold.

Monday morning as we all set out for school, our newfound glee was cut short. We emerged from the house in jeans and sweatshirts. Mark and Jenny emerged in the green plaid of the Catholic school.

I would be lying if I said we never were friends with them. But once we knew our differences, all hopes of storybook neighbors were lost. We played together, but we fought often. the fights were always over silly things, things that all came back to the public vs. Catholic school battle. We fought over the fact that we didn't want to hide their Easter eggs and then hunt for them. We fought over our pesky facts getting in the way of the wrong information the nuns would give them about sex. We fought over whether or not the leaf Mark was holding was poison ivy. We fought over the fact that we were pretty sure we had nothing to do with the death of Jesus.

Years later, their mother had another baby (then another and another and another) and the family moved to a bigger house in a newer area. With all those little brothers, it was no surprise that Jenny ended up in the public high school. We got along fine then, but Jenny hung out with the cool kids and I was a band nerd.

Book Club Part II

At least this time, I know I'm not repeating myself. I haven't even thought about this book in over ten years. But it had a profound effect on how I saw myself as a child.

There was actually an entire series of books about Anastasia. My mother found the first one on a bookstore visit that was a desperate attempt to get me interested in reading something when I was about eight.

Anastasia was a ten or eleven year old girl living in the suburbs of Boston. She was an only child (until her far younger brother came along late in the first book), but other than that we had so much in common.

She was nothing like most of the girls in the books I read up to that point (except my beloved Harriet). She was headstrong and independent and not interested in typically girly things. She bred hamsters and talked to a bust of Sigmund Freud.

She was insecure, but in a way I could relate to much more than that wishy-washy Margaret (Are you there God, it's me, Margaret?) or the sisters in Sweet Valley Twins. I wasn't worried about boys and bras, I was worried about life's bigger questions and so was Anastasia.