she cried mo, mo, MO!

Wednesday, oct. 8, 2008   |   0 comments

Do you live in Missouri? Do you know anyone who lives in Missouri? Do you suspect someone secretly lives in Missouri?

If yes, please tell yourself or your secretive friend to head over to the Missouri rosters at Project Vote (the love-child site of my big-brained, tender-hearted, and well-groomed friend Who Shall Remain Nameless) to make sure your/their name isn’t on the list of peoples who may think they’re registered to vote and yet who might not actually be registered to vote. (Due to problems, accidents, or general sinistery with applications, some people’s registration never went through!)

If you find a familiar name on the list, good news: There’s still a few hours to fix the problem! But you have to hop to it—the deadline for Missouri is the end of day today, October 8, so now’s your chance!

PSSS: Pass it on!

sometimes I worry

Thursday, aug. 28, 2008   |   0 comments

The other night I rewatched Lost in Translation and was struck anew with my love for Sophia’s way with the little things. This time, it was something that Scarlett said in the middle of a relationship freakout in a call home to a friend. So she’s tearfully unloading about how she’d gone to see some chanting monks and was all disturbed because the experience didn’t make her feeling anything. Then, onto her bonfire of complaints, she tosses in this tiny camel-breaking straw about how her husband has “started wearing hair products.” I just love that! It’s such a weird whatever kind of non-issue, but it’s the exact sort of small fact that would trigger a realization that the person you’re with is different than what you’d imagined or hoped or planned on.

Recently I spent some high-quality time with a friend who’s going through a not so awesome divorce, and I asked her if and when she first knew that it wasn’t going to work out between her and her husband. She told me that there was no big, horrible event or battle to blame, more it was a series of small misses and faulty communications over a long stretch of time that caused the unraveling. And that maybe if they’d stopped and nipped things in the beginning, when the issues were small and ridiculous, they’d still be together. But since they let the little things build and accumulate, they’d snowballed together into an impossible impasse.

I trotted out my favorite analogy about how long-term couples are like garden gates, where over time weather warps the wood and causes the frame and door to swell in different directions. And as the door loses the ability to swing clean, you either have to force your way through with a kick or a shoulder-shove, or make room by shaving off some wood. Otherwise the door freezes and you have to just let it go and maybe find a new way to get into the back yard. Etcetera.

Then I started ruminating on what the small schisms might be that would cause Marco and me to swell in different directions—because if we stay together as long as I hope we do, the law of averages and human nature dictate that inevitably there will be real hurdles and growing-aparts that we will have to clear.

Then my friend said, “Whatever it is, it’s probably happened already and you didn’t even notice.” I gasped, and then we laughed and laughed, because she and I both know how worrier me so loves to dig my teeth into paranoid thoughts just like that. Oh, we do have fun!

When I got home, the first thing I did when I walked in the door was corner Marco to tell him what my friend had said and then ask him what relationship-ending seed he thought might already be growing between the two of us. Marco, without even pausing for a beat: “Oh. Your worrying. Clearly.” Bam! Ha ha! Wait.

I knew it!

Tuesday, aug. 26, 2008   |   0 comments

A malevolent power has stolen control of all the souls of Evany, it turns out.

naan combatant

Friday, aug. 22, 2008   |   0 comments

As someone living in this modern world, a world that requires a certain amount of circumspection regarding the strangers we choose and choose not to engage with on our sidewalks, I sometimes find myself caught in a struggle between my plucky sense of fairness (which believes everyone deserves the benefit of the doubt), and my wily sense of self preservation (which believes the lurching man with the clawfoot and the exposed underbelly deserves a wide berth).

Sometimes my plucky side wins the day, and when I’m approached, I will stop and listen to the stranger’s story. Most times, the story is of the sob variety, full of automotive troubles, infections, and used thermoses in need of selling. But every once in awhile, I’m rewarded with someone who simply wonders what time it is, or needs to know how to get from downtown San Francisco to Yosemite (“just drive…East”). And on these occasions, my plucky side is always so happy that she decided to stop and listen, because there’s nothing Plucky loves more than sharing the time and showing the way.

But if there’s something funny about the person’s body language, or pants, self-preservationist Evany does a little internal profiling and conclusion-jumping, and opts to simply mutter “I’m sorry” as she sidesteps on by.

Most of the time, that’s the end of it; the person simply tries again with the next passerby. But sometimes, for instance while we were walking to get Indian food last night, the sidestepped person goes bananas and starts yelling about how rude it is to not even listen to what he was going to ask, reasoning that tugged directly at Plucky’s guiltstrings.

So I circled back and told the man to go ahead and ask me his question. Only instead of asking the question, he launched into a longggg preamble about “respect,” with all these sub-sections and bullet points and a sad lack of question marks. I was crabby and hungry and the naan bread was calling, so I not very nicely began to count down the dwindling seconds of my patience on my hand digits, “5…4….3…” This total rudeness struck the man as rude, and suddenly he’s all screaming and FUCK-YOU-ing and pedaling furiously after us on his bike.

Which is how I wound up yelling in the middle of Grand Avenue that “My ears are not trashcans!” And then, pointing at one of the public trashcans on the street, inviting the man to insert his “mouth into the trashcan!”

Not exactly the reasoned exchange of information that Plucky had hoped for. Or the low-profile, low-risk exchange that Self Preservationist was shooting for? Welcome, unpleasant, regrettable, uninvited Evany! Please, won’t you just sit down and put some of this giant Taj Mahal lager into your mouth. See? How much better? Yes. Shh. There there.

Maybe I should skip the multiple-personalitied decision tree and simply answer each and every approaching stranger’s request with a gigantic smile and an oblivious “I believe it’s about 7:30!”

cafe platitude

Monday, aug. 18, 2008   |   0 comments

There is this awful hippie restaurant here in the bay area called Cafe Gratitude, where every last raw, vegan item on the menu has an unforgivably self-affirming name, like “I Am Fulfilled” and “I Am Dazzling.” And when you order these dishes, you’re not allowed to just say, “I’ll have the kale.” They actually make you say it: “I’ll have the ‘I am Giving.’” And then the waiter turns it back on you, affirming that indeed “You ARE giving!” “You ARE dazzling!” Horrible, horrible.

While generally I believe in the value of positive reinforcement, I think it only works if it comes from a reliable source, for instance someone not a waiter hoping for a tip. And also the message has to be meaningful, something beyond words that translate to just “carrot avocado soup”?

Sadly their food is kind of tasty, jerks. But their whole shitty concept makes me so crabby, I refuse to interact with them. So like a kid getting someone to buy wine coolers at the 7-11, I sent my friend Megan (who speaks hippie) up to the Cafe Gratitude at the farmers market (where of course they have a booth), and she purchased me three I Am Insightfuls as I stood off to the side, trying not to faint from rolling my eyes so hard. As the guy handed back the change, he asked Megan, his face all punch-me-in-the-face-please serene, “So what core value do you care about most?” (Oh and that’s another one of their gimmicks: they end each visit by asking you a metaphysical question about your life philosophy or whatever. There’s even a board game, possibly the most perfect instrument of Evany-torture ever imagined, board game (oh no) + hippie spiel (help!).) And Megan, who is nice, gave him a considered answer. “Integrity” I think she said, or maybe “Honesty.” He nodded sagely, giving his royal approval of her core values, and then he craned his neck up and over at me, and said, “And what about you? What’s your core value?”

I shook my head no, oh no. But he just kept staring at me with zen-like expectancy, so finally I muttered out a defiant, “Privacy…how about.” Pow! Take that! But he just kept smiling his hippie face in loving, unflapped support of me and my selfish reluctance to forthcome. Yes, you ARE judgmental. You ARE withholding! Re-reminding me once again of the age-old lesson about how verbal sparring with a highminded hippie is like punching an animated sponge: the sticks and stones, they bounce right off the hippie, while you just huff and puff and get very, very tired.