evany, evany thomas

sometimes I worry
Thursday, Aug. 28, 2008 | link

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 | link

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

naan combatant
Friday, Aug. 22, 2008 | link

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 | link

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.

domino's delivers
Monday, Aug. 11, 2008 | link

Our local Domino’s Pizza used to have the most beautifully depressing table set up on the sidewalk out front, a tipsy, dirty, sunburned table with a breathtaking view of of the gas station. And plumly located just inches away from four-lane exhaust jamboree that is Grand Avenue! There was also a moldy umbrella, which I never ever saw unfurled, and a rusty metal folding chair. One chair.

Marco and I liked to entertain ourselves with talk of going there for our anniversary (four years of dating this September!), how first we’d get into position: Marco in a suit, teetering in the rotten chair, with me hovering at full attention beside him, my gown blowing in the wake of all the cars whizzing past. And then we’d cellphone in our order, giving the address of Domino’s Pizza itself as our delivery destination. As confusion ensued, we’d tell the pizza people inside to look out their front door. And there we’d be, smiling and waving and pointing at our hungry, pizza-shaped mouths.

But all our plans were dashed the day Domino’s ad hoc pizza patio suddenly up and disappeared. Gone! Nevermore!

Marco and I were very glummed by the loss, and would always sigh woefully whenever we walked past. But then one day our love of the insane local Domino’s was renewed anew when we caught sight of this magic in the making:

This kind of beautiful does not come from Corporate. Clearly this is the ambition-child of a power-hungry Branch Manager who spotted his pizzamen lounging during a lull in business and, in a fit of got-time-to-lean-got-time-to-clean-liness, sicced them on this little project.

While the lettering may look like it was done freehand, I can attest that many painstaking manhours (three different pizzamen were painting on it as we passed!) were spent taping off the outline for each letter, “oinch” by “oinch,” and then painting in the negative space. However they opted not to paint in the logo, which if you look close is constructed out of nothing but teeth-torn tape, a testament to the glory of restraint. For, more than anything, our Domino boys in blue know the sublimity of the sub-standard.

breathe, breathe in the hair
Friday, Aug. 8, 2008 | link

Just over a month ago, I read a post over at Angry Chicken that mentioned the benefits, both financial- and scalp-happiness-wise, of washing your hair using nothing but baking soda and apple cider vinegar. Not at the same time, of course—since that would cause your head to turn into a volcano of a science fair—but staggered, with the baking soda as the shampoo and the apple cider as the conditioning rinse.

My love of home remedies being slightly stronger than my since-childhoood-in-Marin distaste for hippie schemes, I decided to give it a try. And for the past month, I have indeed been washing my hair with 2 cups of water mixed with 2 tablespoons of baking soda (double the usual amount, but I have troubling amounts of hair) and rinsing with 2 cups of water mixed with 2 tablespoons of apple cider vinegar—it’s all how-to-ed in satisfying detail over at Babyslime.

And I am here to say that I’m very happy with the results! My hair feels good—when it gets wet, gone is that American squeakiness, where your fingers sort of stutter down your head. Instead, my hair feels…supple? Elastic? Childlike? And there’s a lot less tangling. Best of all is the smell, which I for some reason keep describing as “lake-like,” a description that I know sounds boggish and silty and generally unappetizing. But I’m talking about that fresh, comforting, elemental smell of an exhausting childhood day spent sunning and diving into non-chlorinated waters. That smell. And all the people I’ve forced to “smell my head” this past month seem to agree, or at least are not repulsed!

Also, my hair actually looks better, or at least less puffy. And not at all dirty-hippie lank, as I feared.

All in all, a very successful home remedy experiment! Unlike the clove of garlic the internet once convinced me to try as a cure for a yeast infection, an experiment which was…not quite as successful. Suffice it to say that if you’re not single when you start stuffing your infected parts full of garlic,
chicken-style, you very soon will be. But you’ll still have that yeast infection to keep you company.

oh, baby
Tuesday, Aug. 5, 2008 | link

Sometimes I think having a baby might be nice, but neither Marco nor I seem to have developed the all-import Baby Fever, nor has the even-more-compelling Accident of Fate seems to have occurred. Without Fever or Accident, the baby-thinking seems to keep getting back-burnered. And now that I’m 38, it seems the decision may have already been made through lack of deciding, what with my eggs being mostly rotten by now?

Sometimes I think about adoption, though given my luck with picking out mealy, tasteless produce, and non-functioning used automobiles, and bathtub-peeing, fireplace-shitting cats, I’m pretty much guaranteed to choose a lemon…like a kid who wears patchouli or a burning man. Really it’s the whole responsibility of of choosing (versus having it genealogically beyond my control) that scares me. Maybe if the choice weren’t up to me and my Black Hand of Bad Picks, like if the child was just magically left on my doorstep? (Though after that “adoptive child as lemon” analogy, I’m guessing no one’s going to trust their kid to me now.)

Sometimes I think I’ll be fine without ever reproducing, that my wide circle of active and child-free friends, plus my wide circle of friends with awesome kids, together we will fill that need for family.

And sometimes I worry that ten-years-from-now-Evany is going to be very sad that she procrastinated her way out of motherhood, and twenty-years-from-now-Evany is going to be sort of disconnected from the world, without a pair of young eyes to see everything through?

Hm.

what not to wear, the reunion episode
Monday, Aug. 4, 2008 | link

In just over three weeks, I will be attending my 20th high school reunion, an event that fills me with a yucky hot-stomach feeling that I’m guessing (though can’t really be sure…it’s so dark in there) is part social anxiety, part career uncertainty, and part wrinkle sadness, stirred with an unhealthy splash of “oh my god, my life is half over.”

Like a birthday or New Years Eve, a reunion is the kind of milestone that invites painful reflection and personal meter-reading. Blowing out the candles, counting down those last ten seconds of the year, these are times when the small, regret-weakened voice inside really likes to pity-party, fixating on the failures, belittling the achievements, and generally taking dim stock of the previous year. And a high school reunion is all those things, only ten times worse, what with the event rearing its ugly head only once a decade, meaning there’s ten times the annual should-haves and could-haves to look back on. Hurray!

Who should I be for my 20-year reunion: The Mead-Soaked PTA Mom?

So August 30th would be a hard day for me even if it weren’t for the fact that the last time I saw everyone was at my profoundly regrettable ten-year reunion, an event at which I accidentally got myself very, very drunk. As in red wine splashed across the chest of my shirt, mascara down to my chin, holding for dear life onto the railings in the handicap stall, confrontational “Hey! What are you doing here? I thought you’d for sure be serving time by now what with you being such a sick fuck!” and “Remember in eighth grade when you touched my nipples?” drunk.

The Demure Tea Partier?

I’m convinced that the reason I got so heinously plastered that fateful night, apart from the buckets of vodka I mean, was my outfit. It just was not right! For me, the wrong outfit makes me feel tongue-tied and boring and misunderstood, while the right outfit makes me feel attractive and smart and comfortable with the person I turned out to be. And on the night of my tenth high school reunion, I was wearing the wrong outfit.

The Bendable, Posable Cha-Cha-Charming Action Figure?

I had spent the afternoon trying on shirts after pants after skirts after dresses in a terrible fit of outfit indecision. When it came time to head over to my friend Megan’s house—where our circle of still-friends had planned to gather beforehand for drinks—I still wasn’t dressed. So I threw on sweats and grabbed pretty much all the clothes I owned and took them with me, and while we sipped pre-reunion libations, I modeled outfit after outfit, trying to find the perfect combination of fabric and color and texture and not-too-snugness to forge the protective coating of confidence and body-comfort I needed to face the next four hours. But before I could find the Right Outfit, we were late and everyone was yelling at me to Come on! And Let’s go! So I just went out the door in what I was wearing at that moment: a weird cropped neon green shirt, a black-and-white stripped belly-gripping angle-length skirt, and towering maroon platforms. It was a very late-90s look, which was okay since it was 1998. The problem was, it just did not capture my me of that moment. For not only does the right outfit have to look cute, but it also has to make me feel like my outsides match my insides. And clearly, on that night of nights, my insides were begging for vintage postal pants, black webbed belt with metal “E” slider buckle, Rebel sneakers, and a black tee with heart-shaped neckline. Which I firmly believe is why, when we arrived at the reunion, I started pouring myself one bad idea after another. I think I was just trying to drink my insides into matching my outsides!

The Dry Wine-Whitened Gallery Sophisticate?

But this time, it’s going to be different. For my 20th reunion, I’m going to make sure I’m wearing the right outfit. Because you’re going to help me, maybe! Here’s what I’m hoping you’ll do: Take a look at the survey of all my outfits, and if you see one that you think makes me look ultra pinchable (important!) but also embodies the Essence of Evany (absolutely key!), then add a comment for that photo that says, “I totally think you should wear this to reunion!” A reunion, by the way, that will be staged here in the Bay Area (i.e., too cold for short-shorts), in the evening-time (so no brunch-style clam diggers), and we’ll be charmed by the musical stylings of the very same high school band that played at Prom (i.e., actually sweatpants would probably be just fine).

The Cheerfully Swedish Exchange Student? Or some other me entirely? Type your vote at me today!

With your wisdom to guide me into the Right Outfit, clearly there’s no way I can fail! Now the only remaining question is: Do I stay sober to demonstrate how most improved I am? Or do I keep with tradition and get even more loaded and tell all those pieces of dried and tanned fruit leather what I really think…again?

Or maybe this dark night calls something in between…a toast! To temperance!