Ohio Girl

1-Animal Cruelty
2-Racism
3-Most of the “-isms” (Not all, I mean, I am human.)
4-Rod Stewart
5-Hummers
6-Miscarriages of Justice
7-Raisins in cookies
8-Raisins in carrot cake
9-Disproportionate raisin to carob chip ratio in trail mix
10-Ass-kissing (The figurative kind, obviously, as the literal is context-specific.)
11-The way first class air travelers move in around the ticket person at the gate like jackals. What’s the deal? You know you are getting on first anyway!
12-Sweater vests
13-Littering
14-People that drive slow in the left lane
15-Televangelists
16-Televangelist hair
17-The Bush “Legacy” Project
18-Talk Radio
19-My monthly student loan statements
20-Kiera Knightly pursing her lips

Share yours!

I have a horrible headache and am working on a Sunday and am missing the rescheduled Cup race and cannot quit watching cable news instead of sleeping even though they keep having the same Palin is folksy versus Palin is an inexperienced, wing-nut debate.

That run-on sentence could run on and on and on.

I had a very good Saturday and cannot quite figure out how Sunday went so very wrong.

The sky is grey which could be a factor. There is some threat of rain. Rain makes my sinuses hurt. Did I mention the headache?

It is September which may also be a factor. September has always been my favorite month. Perhaps it has to do with the start of school as a kid. You know, all the anticipation and the fancy, new corduroy duds.

Maybe it’s that September includes the coolest summery days and the warmest, brightest part of fall. It previews October when orange leaves contrast the steel, grey autumn sky. I love that.

Maybe it is because my birthday is in September and I associate the month with gifts and friends and milestones. Driver’s license, voter registration, drinking enough to bring down a Rhino LEGALLY. Oh and that legendary 30^th birthday party. If you were there you are blushing right now. If you weren’t, well, put my 40^th in your calendar.

As much as I love this month the universe is always trying to bring it down. There was that birthday lunch spent watching the
Twin Towers collapse. There was the worst ear infection EVER during my 19^th birthday party. There was that one party in my 20s where only my boring friends showed up and I accidentally put cinnamon in the salsa instead of red pepper. Two birthdays ago I was doing battle with an abusive boss.

And then there’s last September.

My 34^th birthday was on a Wednesday and it was a delightfully, low-key, redneck affair. My sister and her family took me out to a little country bar for pool and drinks after work. That’s right, my niece went too. Baby in a bar. I wasn’t lying about the redneck.

My sister bought me a shot of Wild Turkey to round out the beers and had one herself. I thought it might kill her. She is more of a pink, fruity drink kind of gal. She recovered and we ate.

Country karaoke began and the crowd did not disappoint. There were reasonable facsimiles of Garth and Trisha, Tammy and Merle. Many were regulars with the perfect cowboy hats to match the perfect pitch of their performances. I wanted to sing too and although I knew I would not sound as good, I decided at age 34, worrying about what drunk people thought of my singing was no longer a valid excuse for staying quiet. I got up and asked for Delta Dawn and sang my heart out. The crowd appreciated the effort.

That good feeling lasted through to Friday when my friend Julie was offering to show me a good time in Indy for my birthday. We had talked earlier in the week about me going along while she watched her man lay down the bass with his band. I wasn’t feeling up to the drive. Couldn’t we go find some local karaoke, I whined? Who wants to worry about making it back from Indy in the middle of the night? Don’t you have to work in the morning?

We talked about karaoke and how if she ever got the nerve she was going to do These Boots Are Made for Walking–Nancy Sinatra, not that marshmallow Jessica Simpson. We talked about our 30s and the new man she met. It was true love. We talked about dancing and about going to Africa next summer. Well, this summer.

She sat in a chair by my desk with her legs crossed and a woven, hippie bag strapped across her. We talked and lingered until I finally said I wasn’t going to go, definitively. She left. She texted me a few times. Needling me. Taunting me for not going ‘because it was a gorgeous sunny, September evening. The perfect evening for a drive.

The text I got in the middle of the night was not from Julie. And you can guess the end of the story. She never made it back from her drive.

As my 35^th approaches so does a year without her. Maybe this makes the grey feel heavier. Maybe its makes the anticipation of my favorite month overcast with the specter of what may go wrong. Maybe I am just being dramatic.

I have no idea what my plans will be. Drinks, or the cemetery. Drinks at the cemetery? She’d like that. Low-key, or loud and raunchy? Live music or karaoke? If it’s the latter I’ll do These Boots AND Delta Dawn.

I just finished watching the film Twister on network television. I currently lack cable and thus the option of at least the Discovery Channel to make my hours spent on the couch sound intentional and worthwhile. Really, I was avoiding laundry and assorted household duties which if I avoid past this evening will mean going to work sans panties.

I have not gone without underwear since college, but will confess to occasionally having to wash them out in the sink last minute and heading off to the office wearing them still wet. I have gone without seeing Twister since shortly after college, although managed to see it at least twenty times.

Twister played on a loop at the plasma center in Cleveland where some friends and I went to donate body fluids in exchange for money to pay the electric bill and buy beer. We were in the minority as most folks made it clear they were there for crack cash and free cookies.

I do recall another group of twenty-somethings like us. Their group eyed my group across the waiting area. They obviously thought themselves cooler as they had more things that were pierced and were dressed in leftover Goth-gear from their college days. We were all still wearing the same exact flannel shirts and Birkenstock sandals from our own recent time in college and had just finished listening to Hole on the car ride over.

Just before we broke out into a Grunge-Goth, West Side Story face-off we were all called back and connected to machines that took stuff out, separated it, and put some stuff back into our veins. It was not necessary to ponder the disturbing nature of the procedure as Twister was playing on a half dozen TVs that hung from the ceilings. I remember thinking Helen Hunt was kind of hot. I had the same thought watching it today and also noticed that it was Philip Seymour Hoffman who played the loud-mouthed, long-haired, chubby dude.

During Twister a commercial for a local plasma center came on and made a rather appealing appeal for “donations.” I jotted down the number. I don’t so much need cash for beer and electricity anymore. But I DID hear plasma donations speed up your metabolism and help you lose weight.

She was a lovely young woman. Just finished college. Smart. Willing to do the work despite the awful pay. Only thing is her Dad stabbed her Mom last month. She has to testify next week. Her Mom is not speaking to her because she’s thinking about forgiving Dad. She wants so badly to help others, this young woman, the way she couldn’t help her Mom, I suppose, but I think she is too close to it. I think it would eat her alive.

I paused from the monotony of grant reporting yesterday to have a bit to eat. I had been thinking about my granny smith apple smothered in peanut butter all morning. As I ate I opened up msn.com to catch up on the news.

I think the grim reaper must be freelance writing these days. All of the headlines were straight-up death. There was the man that threw his four, small children off a high bridge. The new details about the finals days of the missing hiker. There was the blogging soldier who posted a piece about his death. An if-you-are-reading-this-I-am-dead blog. And then there was the Prime Minister of Pakistan blaming Benazir Bhutto for her own assassination.

“She should not have stood up,” he said, referring to her waving out of the sun roof of her car.

Damned if those headlines did not ruin my granny smith.

What are we to each other? It feels like a new question, but i think it’s just that I have not asked myself in a while. At some point in my social work career I suppose I felt I understood some of the more unfathomable triggers of human behavior; some of the ways that love turns to hate and vice versa. I have felt insulated by that understanding; protected by the distance of perspective.

A client came around drunk and bleeding the other night. She stumbled around numb leaving a blood trail through the building. A smudge on the pole of the porch, a little pool where she almost fell in the entry hall. She was trying to find her bed as 9-1-1 was called. She just wanted to get some sleep. Her mess was still evident the next morning like a CSI scene.

She made it to court after the hospital. Not yet showered. Still wearing her injuries. Her right shoe–a white one–had gone all brown. As the Advocate stood with her she smiled and waved at the man who tried to kill her. She smoothed her hair and wished she had gotten a chance to clean up.

Who in the hell are we to each other?

Today was a parade of meetings; another sort of man-made misery. At 9:30 it was about getting disabled victims of violence service access. At 11 AM it was about managing volunteers. At Noon it was something about a new policy. At 2 it was a client case review. At 4 it was that lovely young woman who wants to help so badly.

Maybe I SHOULD hire her. It may eat her alive, but it may eat her alive anyway, no matter where she works. And I get the impression she would rather stand up and be shot down, than not stand up at all.

Happy Winter everyone! Can you believe it’s that time of year again? Yes, that’s right, time for my annual Christmas card letter! I know I have been a little out of touch so I’ll make sure and bring you all up to speed.

I should not have fallen asleep during that Anne of Greene Gables marathon on PBS because I think it colored my thinking. The first thing to go wrong was realizing that I don’t bake. The second was realizing I don’t garden. From there the little job in the little town went farther South than I had.

So, I left the little town and, like Anne, got a job in the nearest big town. I spent the first few commutes kicking and screaming which made driving difficult. My vision of a simple small town life had been replaced by the reality of traffic and running a large shelter for women.

I got to know a whole lot about plumbing. The bathroom above my office flooded, not once, but twice. The biggest flood sent fecal matter through the ceiling light fixture where it landed on my computer keyboard. As I threw away files and argued over the phone with the supply lady about why a new keyboard was, in fact, necessary, something happened to me. Some say I finally lost my mind. I prefer to think of it as a Zen epiphany. As shit literally rained from above I decided it was time to let go. Que sera, whatever will be, and all that jazz.

I also sold my Cleveland house, finally. My new house it almost ready. And of course, it’s my favorite time of year. Who could ask for more? 

Remember friends, some years are better than others, but it isn’t all bad until you’ve got shit on your head. Hope 2008 is a good one! Merry Christmas!

From my small-town office window—my office actually being a big, old small-town house—I saw from an odd angle what looked like a water tower in the distance. I am talking the extreme distance and rather toothpick-like. I decided water tower by instinct rather than any real sight indicators.

I passed by the water tower a couple hours later interpreting it to be THE water tower again by instinct and some vague abilities related to my internal compass. It sort of leapt out of the yellowing soy bean field as I was driving to forget, or remember. Same difference.

I was driving in the countryside—which is rapidly becoming an intentionally marketed “rustic” version of suburbia—for change of scenery therapy of which I have always been a fan. (Depressed? Try
Alabama. Restless? Definitely Texas. Spiritually starved? Well, Indiana works, believe it, or not.)

I drove past yellows and oranges and a 12-year-old version of myself walking down a country lane with a group of girls from a country slumber party discussing rather rustic, country-girl interpretations of sex. One of us—not me—had already given up the soy bean bud and was waxing all flowery over something that sounded as appealing as the mating of a farmer’s bull. Had we even noticed the water tower?

Later I plopped down on the bed—disturbing the dog—having not forgotten a single thing I had hoped would be forgotten. (Or remembered for that matter.) From an odd angle, I could see the moon perfectly framed by the dark of the outdoors and the dark of the windowpane. It was the same moon I had been admiring all summer from that odd, perfect perspective—painted and polished precisely for viewing from MY bed.

It was the same moon I had forgotten all about.

Jeff Burton won Dover on Sunday. I am sure you have all heard by now. In the last 30 or so laps Burton drove his freaking heart out trying to pass Kenseth for the lead. He would pull within range, drop to the inside, and then fall back again. Almost there and then back again. So close and then back again. This painful push and pull was punctuated by camera shots of Burton’s wife whose face looked rather like a little girl watching someone kick her puppy. And just when you thought Burton would once again be relegated the bridesmaid, he did it. He made the pass and he won his first race since Phoenix in 2001 and more importantly, his poor wife got to exhale.

I have been thinking of Burton in the days since–his five-year slump becoming a point of contemplation in regards to my nearly five-month slump. Slump I suppose is overstating it. Bump in the road? Sharp, unexpected, curve in the otherwise straight and narrow? If you know me personally you know I have been alternating between constant weeping and angry ranting. Out of the ordinary even for me.

I somehow took a wrong turn in my recent move and have ended up on a losing streak professionally speaking. (For those who are interested, the family is great which is WHY I moved and which is why I should quit complaining so much.) I went from a job where I enjoyed some great wins—helping to develop innovative programming for women, working with supportive and like-minded colleagues, getting a great going-away party—to a place where asking questions is defined as insubordination and where people spend more time talking about one another in the hallway than actually getting anything done. I don’t fit in. I am not very popular. I feel like some mean guy is kicking my puppy.

It is an awful feeling to be liked one day and disliked the next. Burton must know something about that. One minute you are full of promise, the guy getting the Coca-Cola shower in victory lane, and the next minute the butt of jokes, the permanent hitchhiker on the NASCAR circuit. Just when you think you have proved your worth, your talent, you are sent back to the beginning to start proving it all over again.

Burton worked his butt off for five years to make that winning pass. I hope my slump will end much sooner. When it does, I want to be showered in soft drinks too.

Because the people demand it (at least the people in my head), here are the top five things on my mind this week. Feel free to respond with your own top five (or ten, or whatever) of ideas, movies, eateries, complaints, presidents (please don’t forget Chester Arthur—the father of the civil service system), or what-have-you.

1-Turning 33. This actually has not been on my mind much at all. I have been busy with other things. But today is the day and people keep reminding me, so here it is. 33–who cares? 30 was big. 32 was fun. 33 is an odd number, which I hate, as those of you who know about my OCD tendencies are aware. And people are always telling me it is the age when Christ was crucified. What exactly am I to do with that information?

2-Psycho Boss.

3-The Chase. Although I have neglected it here in blog world the lead up to the final ten races for the NASCAR Cup championship have taken up copious amounts of brain space. Richmond was a nail-biter with Stewart, Kahne, and Martin taking turns riding the 11^th-place bubble. Junior held on for dear life with a less than ideal car. Kahne raced his way in. Stewart was shown the door. Poor Tony. I thought we would see a fit of mythic proportions in the post-race interview, but he was humble and calm. He deserved to be in it. My predictions? Hmmm. Kenseth and Kahne show the most momentum. Junior will have to continue to fight to make any headway. Anything can happen, which is exactly the way I like it.

4-Corn Hole. Who knew throwing sacks into a hole could be so satisfying? Even WITHOUT alcohol. It is impossible to live in southern Ohio and not give into the charms of corn hole. Drive around anywhere and you can find families, old folks, meth addicts, or college students playing a strip-corn hole format–tossing sacks, drinks, and conversation all at once. A good time had by all.

5-Ovulation. I am ovulating. How do I know that? Because cliché as it is any woman in their 30s–sans children–knows the moment an egg is set free from the nest. I blame the feminists AND the anti-feminists for this hyper vigilant state of affairs. The feminists for their ‘you can have it all’ fairly tale and the anti-camp for their obsession with breeding.   

I was born in a small town

And I live in a small town

Probably die in a small town

Oh, those small communities

-Mellencamp

There is more to the story of course. I was born in a township-near a small town. In fact, when I was a kid the small town seemed rather large and exciting; all those people living right up close to one another. Then the small town started to feel, well, small-with its lack of Cambodian take-out and over abundance of Republicans.

Just a small town girl, livin’ in a lonely world

She took the
midnight train goin’ anywhere

-Journey

Actually, I drove a Chevy Cavalier to Cleveland-the farthest big town that still allowed for Ohio Girl status. I lived right up close to people and learned about public transportation and the crack epidemic. I met tons of people I liked-hardly any of them Republicans-and I ate Cambodian take-out with abandon.

Who says you can’t go home

There’s only one place they call me one of their own

Just a hometown boy (girl), born a rolling stone

Who says you can’t go home

-Bon Jovi and that blonde, country chick

And then last week I left the big town. I am living back in that township and working in that small town. I live right up close to cows, horses, and goats. There’s no crack, but plenty of meth and the toothless folks to prove it. I have met people I like-Republican and otherwise. And I am already desperately missing Cambodian take out.